Behind the Curtain: Mad media vs. beat-up Biden
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A true Washington psychodrama will unfold today a mile from the White House, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.
- A red-hot press corps — which feels ignored, used and deceived — will get its first true unfiltered crack at grilling President Biden, the most media-sheltered president of modern times. "The dogs are loose," a Biden adviser told us.
- Biden, bitter over media coverage of his age and acuity, gets his shot at redemption — a chance to show the press and public he can think fast, handle the heat, and spar and speak improvisationally without glitching.
Why it matters: The stakes are even higher than during the first presidential debate. If Biden looks weak and wobbly, his Democratic critics will pounce and crank up resignation calls. If he looks strong and steady, the anti-Biden campaign could stall.
- Biden's every word and move will be dissected, every mangled sentence scrutinized, every stiff move or mind freeze discussed.
The big picture: Senior Democrats are increasingly bearish about the chances Biden stays at the top of the ticket. "I think this weekend is critical," said a former top government official. "I expect key conversations to happen at the end of the week after NATO. But the reality is setting in. The numbers are bad. The money is frozen. The path isn't there."
- A top Democratic operative said of today's press conference: "If he performs well, it still doesn't put it to rest. He's got to do that over and over and over. That's the problem for him."
- Another former official said: "If he does push-ups on stage, it doesn't matter" — the damage was done when 50+ million saw the debate.
The intrigue, Part 1: Don't underestimate reporters' bitterness at this White House.
- A natural tension always exists. But this is different: Biden has operated in a protective bubble, often hermetically sealed from tough questioning. Many reporters believe the White House hid signs of Biden's aging, and played them or badgered them when they did push on the topic.
- Many are being harassed on social media for being too soft on Biden. In our experience, most reporters are more insecure than people think, and highly sensitive to how friends and foes see them, especially on X.
This helps explain the recent eruptions by correspondents at the daily on-camera press briefings. (In this archaic ritual, reporters sit with their competitors and share what's on their minds, in return for predictable talking points. But we digress.)
- Post-debate, reporters have been much more combative and skeptical. This will uncork at 5:30 p.m. ET today at Biden's first real "big boy" press conference in — well, forever. It'll come after a fairly long day of work at the NATO summit.
The intrigue, Part 2: Biden has a love-hate relationship with the media. He loves the gang on "Morning Joe" and right now hates The New York Times, which has covered his post-debate mess aggressively.
- The New York Times Opinion section has been relentless on Biden: two unsigned editorials + multiple columns by Tom Friedman and Nick Kristoff (again!), and opinion pieces by George Clooney and James Carville. All have been blunt, some brutal. The Biden White House has been apoplectic about it.
Between the lines: Truth is, White House aides shielded Biden from tough press-corps questioning until tonight, because they feared a moment like the last debate. He rarely faces tough questioning in public. So some aides are deeply worried about his capacity to pull this off. They know he could make matters worse. A debate-like performance might end things.
- Like the debate, this is a time, venue and risk of the White House's choosing. Despite promising more improvisational moments to validate his fitness and lucidity, Biden has done the ABC interview and his "Morning Joe" call-in. The rest is choreography.
Biden pretended to do free-flowing interviews with friendly Black radio hosts over the weekend — only to get busted for feeding them pre-written questions. One radio host lost her job for taking the bait.
The other side: White House officials point to Biden's 47 interviews this year (one-third Donald Trump's rate for interviews and pressers at this point in office) and 580 on-the-fly "gaggles" with reporters while in office.
- Biden will do an interview in Austin on Monday with NBC's Lester Holt — airing as a prime-time special at 9 p.m. ET, counterprogramming the opening night of the Republican convention.
- Biden aides savored a pre-debate Media Matters for America tally saying "five of the top US newspapers have published nearly 10 times as many articles focused just on Biden's age or mental acuity as focused on just Trump's."
David E. Sanger — White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times, and author of this spring's "New Cold Wars" — tells us the press-government tension is healthy. "If your ideal is placid, agreeable press conferences," he said, "the Kremlin and Chinese foreign ministry run them daily."
- But Sanger said the White House "deflected for months, or years, questions about the president's health and diagnoses ... The question is whether the president can win back the lost confidence. I don't know. But what I would seek as a White House reporter would be evidence that the president has been exhaustively tested and all relevant information has been fully disclosed."
- Go deeper: Last 12 columns.
