One of the most infuriating parts of Joe Biden’s presidency—aside from his stupefyingly disastrous policies of open borders, unscientific tyrannical COVID vaccine mandates, energy job-killing executive orders, socialist inflationary spending, and a disgraceful exit from Afghanistan—is the mere fact that he is the least accessible president in modern history.
According to the American Presidency Project, a database compiled at the University of Santa Barbara that tracks presidential interactions with the media, Biden has had the fewest number of solo or joint press conferences of any president since Bill Clinton’s lame-duck year in 2000, a year in which Clinton traveled to 22 different countries, including to India, Pakistan, Egypt, Japan, Germany, Russia, Nigeria, and Vietnam.
The only places Biden seems to travel to are his homes in Wilmington or Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where he’s been at least 25 times (as of October 27) and where he can remain as invisible as possible.
Biden also has the distinction of setting the presidential record for the most number of days (64) without holding a single news conference since taking office. The next highest president on that list is George W. Bush, who waited 33 days before giving his first press conference. Former President Donald Trump held his first press conference just 27 days into his presidency.
Biden is now on record as having held six solo “press conferences,” but even that number is misleading, considering that he almost exclusively calls on pre-selected reporters (who need to be granted access to the East Room by his handlers) and often appears to have the answers to their softball questions written down ahead of time.
As of Nov. 20, Biden had held just nine combined solo or joint press conferences in his first ten months in office, and he still has yet to step foot inside the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, where more reporters would be able to ask him questions. By comparison, Trump held 21 combined solo or joint press conferences in his first year in office, including a whopping 35 solo press conferences in 2020.
While Biden has made a habit of hiding from the White House Press Corps, his handlers have also rarely allowed him to do any interviews. As of December 1, Biden has done just 18 media interviews in the entire year, while Trump had already done 89 during the same point in his presidency. Former Presidents Barack Obama (141), George W. Bush (44), Clinton (53), George H.W. Bush (46), and Ronald Reagan (46) all did significantly more interviews during the same timeframe of their presidency.
When Jen Psaki, Biden’s chief White House propagandist, was recently asked about reneging on her multiple promises that Biden would soon do more interviews, here is how she responded: “I would very much like that to happen. We are always competing with time on the schedule. I’m going to be honest, his schedule has been quite packed. But he would like to do it. We would like to get it on the schedule. So, I don’t have anything to predict or preview for you at this point and time, but hopefully, we will be able to add some local interviews in the next couple of weeks.”
Apparently Biden is much busier than Herbert Hoover, who averaged 67 press conferences during the heart of the Great Depression from 1929-1933, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who found time to average 59 solo press conferences between 1940-1945 in the middle of something called World War II.
Considering that Biden has presided over the worst immigration crisis in U.S. history with more than 2 million foreign citizens set to illegally enter the United States this year, skyrocketing homicides in Democrat-run cities, a Consumer Price Index that is up 6.8 percent in the last year (and at its highest point in 39 years), a supply chain crisis that shows no signs of slowing, and a U.S. Embassy, along with billions of dollars worth of weaponry, that is now in the hands of the Taliban, one would think the American people deserve some answers from their president.
Is it really a surprise that a new NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist poll has Biden’s approval at just 41 percent, compared to 55 percent who disapprove of performance? The same poll also found that just 29 percent of independents approve of his performance, even though he received support from 54 percent of that crucial demographic in the 2020 election.
Yet even with these abysmal poll numbers, every indication from the White House communications office to the American people heading into the midterms in 2022 is that nothing will change. Biden’s handlers will continue to trot the president out every few days to read scripted remarks from a teleprompter while he adds to his now 76 executive orders before scurrying away from reporters faster than Usain Bolt.
This is what “unity” and “decency” looks like in Joe Biden’s America.
