As panicked Democrats continue to worry about the potential dangers of President Biden’s accelerating cognitive decline, Big Media has spent this week focusing mainly on comments made during a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill and the steady stream of Democratic House reps publicly urging Biden to quit the race. However, little attention has been paid to Biden’s next opportunity to confirm everyone’s worst judgments about his mental state: a rare solo press conference scheduled for Thursday.
The event has the potential to inflict even more damage than his primetime interview with George Stephanopoulos last week. It will take place in front of a press corps that has been re-programmed, shifting from Biden-protection to Biden-scrutiny. While Team Biden unleashed a major Monday offensive aimed at removing doubts about whether the 81-year-old will stay in the race, his campaign is still teetering as it receives a steady stream of shoves from both inside and outside government.
Thursday’s press conference could be a game-changer that takes the Democrats’ anti-Biden rebellion to a new level of intensity — one that sees the first Democratic senators come forward to publicly oppose Biden’s continuation in the race. The big question: To what extent will the White House be able to choreograph the whole affair.
Indeed, mainstream media has previously colluded in concealing the fact that the White House press corps has aided and abetted sham press conferences where Biden has been caught holding cheat sheets that not only tell him which reporters to call on but even give him the full text of the question each reporter will ask.
Now, however, it’s a new ball game, and the White House can’t expect such tactics to go unreported this time around. The Biden campaign recently came under fire when urban-talk-radio hosts at two stations said the campaign gave them a pre-selected list of questions when Biden appeared on their shows with hopes of bolstering his sagging support among black Americans. One host was fired for going along with the scheme.
Amid widespread demands for Biden to demonstrate his ability to manage unscripted conversations, the White House communications staff is between a rock and a hard place. Biden’s grown accustomed to stage-managed press conferences, and is likely to perform badly if he’s now forced to attempt a real one. On the other hand, if the White House pre-selects reporters who’ve submitted questions in advance, it could be a scandal — the one that should have already erupted when we and others publicized the practice back in April 2023.
Adding another layer of difficulty is the fact that the press conference will likely take place during Biden’s danger zone, between 10 am and 4 pm, according to White House sources. Outside this time range, he is more likely to have verbal miscues and become fatigued. Additionally, his embattled communication team has demonstrated some jarring incompetence in regard to this critical press conference.
Stand by for what will likely be the most-watched press conference of Biden’s term in office. a prospect that surely has his caretakers filled with dread.
