OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
President Joe Biden is facing swift backlash this week after he was seen using a “cheat sheet” during Wednesday’s press conference with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.
During a segment on “Outnumbered,” Kayleigh McEnany and the other co-hosts tore into Biden after a camera caught a close-up image of the president using a detailed cheat sheet, which appeared to include a question from an L.A. Times reporter.
McEnany — who has taken some time off this year after the birth of her second child and to launch her new book — wasted little time tearing into Biden and highlighting that she never experienced a situation like this during her time as the press secretary in the Trump administration.
“It is really something. The question involves semiconductors. It also involved alliances and how it would be affected. I can tell you, I never had that level of detail to provide President Trump from a legacy print media outlet like this one. Occasionally you’d have foreign reporters have a very nuanced question they want to ask him that’s trying to get a leg up in the briefing. But the idea that a reporter from the L.A. Times would give this, it really is something,” McEnany said.
Below is a video of the cheat sheet, which also included a picture of the reporter along with the pronunciation breakdown of her last name. It also had “Question #1” handwritten at the top of the sheet, indicating the president should call on her first at the conclusion of his remarks.
“How are YOU squaring YOUR domestic priorities — like reshoring semiconductors manufacturing — with alliance-based foreign policy?” read the question in Biden’s hand.
Joe Biden was caught red-handed with a cheat sheet that contained the names and questions of reporters he was scheduled to answer.
Listen as this reporter goes along with the scam and functions as the propaganda arm of the U.S. political establishment.pic.twitter.com/4AIWc9Kr6c
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) April 27, 2023
McEnany said that while it’s possible the reporter provided topics to the White House press team, she argued it appears the team was given a heads-up so that they could give Biden a prepared answer to the question.
“I talked to several members of my staff who were in the lower press. I was in upper press, and lower presses where you had interactions on a daily basis with reporters. It’s really the front lines. And they said, no, nobody was coming to us with topics, with exact questions,” she said. “Occasionally we would get the topic, but certainly not the question. And they said to me, we put in the work. So when we came to you, and we said, we think this person’s going to ask this or that person’s going to ask this, it’s because we looked at their Twitter feed, we looked at their articles, we did the research, and we could surmise what we thought the reporter would ask. But it was putting in the work, not getting a head start, as it seems to be in this case.”
WATCH:
The L.A. Times denied any wrongdoing and said in a statement to Fox News: “Our reporter did not submit any questions in advance of the Q&A with President Biden. Courtney Subramanian covers the White House for the Los Angeles Times. As such, she is in regular contact with the White House press office seeking information for her reporting. You would have to ask the White House who prepared the document for the president and why they included that question.”
Fox News contributor Marie Harf, who previously worked in the Obama administration, claimed the incident was being “a little overblown.”
“Principals often have a heads-up on what kinds of issues reporters want to ask about and talk about. And at the end of the day, President Biden can answer it however he wants to,” Harf said. “I am 100% confident this White House is not telling reporters what to ask. That is a ludicrous thing to say he is being prepared by his staff for the questions they know will get asked. That happens every day.”
Co-host Emily Compagno, however, hit back and said it seemed like Biden’s team was worried about him trying to answer questions on his own.
“Because unless there’s an Ouija board involved, I don’t understand how you can say maybe he knew the topics and then get to word for word the question. Somewhere along the line, he’s having his handheld,” Compagno said.
