President Joe Biden is ramping up his looks with pleasant media personalities ahead of the 2024 general election, all while seemingly spurning meetings with the nation’s largest papers, lines, and television channels.
At this point in his term in office, Biden trails his immediate White House predecessors, former Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama, in sit-down interviews, formal press conferences, and informal question-and-answer sessions with reporters. The White House press corps has been pressing the administration for months, if not years, to increase the frequency of Biden’s press interactions. Biden, who vowed to restore transparency to the office, has been in office for years.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and other senior administration officials claim that Biden frequently receives inquiries from the press, but those requests have been politely rejected. Still, a recent report from Politico about the administration ’s frosty relationship with the New York Times, all centered on factual coverage of the president ’s age and general polling, underscores this White House’s arms-length approach to handling the press.
The New York Times responded to the report by claiming that Biden violated the organization’s “dangerous precedent ” by refusing to interview reporters with established media outlets. It added that it had spoken with Vice President Kamala Harris and her team to express those concerns.
The statement reads,” Systematically avoiding interviews and questions from major news organizations does n’t just undermine an important norm; it also sets up a risky precedent that upcoming presidents can use to avoid scrutiny and accountability,” it reads. Publisher of the New York Times, A. G. Millions of Americans rely on CNN, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and other major independent news organizations to understand their governments, and Sulzerberg has repeatedly urged the White House to do so. ”
Biden’s interview output has increased exponentially over the past two months, but not on the traditional Washington media circuit.
Since the last week of February, Biden has sat for interviews on Late Night with Seth Meyers, The Howard Stern Show, and SmartLess, a podcast hosted by actors Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, and Sean Hayes. In late March, he and former US presidents Bill Clinton and Obama moderated a tongue-in-cheek panel.
And Biden is n’t the only one who is having fun. Harris sat for an extended interview with ABC’s Drew Barrymore that ended on Monday, during which the actress gushed about Harris’ relationship with her stepchildren and demanded that she be the “Momala of the country. ” ”
The cherry on top? Biden’s Saturday appearance at the annual White House Correspondents ’ Dinner, where his tight, 10 minutes warming up the crowd for comedian Colin Jost felt more like an extended campaign ad than a true comedy set. Later, Jost explained to Biden how his Staten Island firefighter grandfather lived there. Because Trump is simply “decent, ” unlike Trump, he wo n’t be a traditional Democratic Party voter in 2020, and he did so once more this election.
Three veteran Democratic campaign officials, who are all familiar with Biden’s reelection strategy, told the Washington Examiner that this recent interview push should be seen as an extension of his “trusted messenger ” strategy as well as as a way to broaden his influence while avoiding a number of negative headlines that might impede his campaign for reelection.
President Biden needs to reenergize the coalition that voted for him in the election of 2020, many of whom are n’t maniacally reading every issue of the New York Times or Washington Post like we are here in D. C. , ” one strategist told the Washington Examiner. The campaign is aiming to draw attention to people who are well-known and who have little to do with politics to help voters become aware of the persona that President Biden embodies in comparison to other people. ”
“This is a no-brainer. By interacting with programs that have a vested interest in him defeating Trump, President Biden can avoid worries about the economy or Gaza, a second strategist cynically claimed.
The Biden campaign refutes the notion that the president is completely disregarding traditional media outlets, claiming that his media appearances are tailored to appeal to a particular audience where they are already watching the news. In the middle of Biden’s most recent stretch of softball interviews, he did sit down with NBC’s Jonathan Capehart in March to discuss his third State of the Union. This year alone, he has conducted more than a dozen radio interviews with stations that are primarily focused on black and Hispanic communities.
“People in D. C. and New York may not always see it, ” Biden campaign communications Michael Tyler explained to CNN in April of the president ’s regional media approach. You do n’t know who is viewing it, though. The voters we are attempting to reach. ”
The campaign’s goal is to ensure that the president is in direct contact with the voters, who will determine the way to the 270 electoral votes, he added. More on the substance and the issues that matter to voters are attracted to these interviews than Beltway and New Yorkers. ”
Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the White House, denied that Biden intentionally avoided contentious political interviews.
“As a White House that believes deeply in the role of the free press in American Democracy, we would note that a mutually honest, fact-based, respectful back-and-forth is a cornerstone of any healthy relationship between a media outlet and an administration, ” Bates wrote in a statement. We have that type of discussion with the New York Times and numerous other media outlets. ”
Biden’s campaign officials also claim that the president’s enormous cash advantage allows the team to add strong advertising and a full-court social media press to their media strategy. The campaign has purchased more than$ 25 million in ads aimed at minority voters in battleground states, with independent organizations supporting Biden’s reelection acquiring millions of additional airtime on their own.
Meanwhile, on social media, the Biden campaign continues to expand its “trusted messenger ” network and is aiming to serve content, in some capacity, to every person eligible to vote in the 2024 election.
A senior Biden campaign official explained that the media environment we are in is the most graduated we have ever had. “It is different than 2016. It is unique compared to 2020. Not everyone consumes news in the same way. People live in various environments, which implies that we must live in those environments. ”
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What we have to do is very different from what Trump must do because we need to convince the people who voted for us the first time to simply come back and support us, the person continued. “ When we look at the digital operation, it is not just TikTok, it ’s not just Instagram, it ’s not just digital ads.
People are in all these places, different demos, different ages, whoever, so we have to make sure we are hitting all these places because some people are on TikTok but they are not on Instagram, they said, literally speaking. “Some people may be on Instagram, but they’re not on TikTok, and then, of course, there are people who are on both, so we have to make sure that we are getting our message across and making it resonate. ”
