OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
An administration aide warned reporters not to even “think about” asking President Joe Biden any questions as he hosted a round table event at the White House.
Biden was meeting with the CEOs of several energy companies to try and sell his Build Back Better agenda, which died in Congress earlier this year after moderate Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona refused to support it.
After Biden finished his opening remarks, reporters began shouting questions at him as White House staffers worked to move the press corps out of the room, The Daily Caller reported.
According to White House pool reporters, one aide voiced concern that Biden would actually begin taking questions, going on to warn a reporter who lingered in the room.
She admonished: “Don’t think about it, Matt,” according to the pool report.
The outlet notes:
Biden’s White House has faced criticism for a lack of transparency in its first year, with staff often shouting down reporters and Biden himself being less available than other modern presidents. Biden held fewer than half as many press conferences in his first year than any five of his most recent predecessors.
The issue came to a head in September during Biden’s White House meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Following the meeting, U.K. reporters were given the chance to ask questions, but White House staff shouted down members of the U.S. press corps. The incident led to a showdown between White House press secretary Jen Psaki and the White House Correspondents’ Association.
“The entire editorial component of the U.S. pool went immediately into Jen Psaki’s office to register a formal complaint that no American reporters were recognized for questions in the president’s Oval Office, and that wranglers loudly shouted over the president as he seemed to give an answer to Ed O’Keefe’s question about the situation at the southern border,” WHCA President Steven Portnoy said at the time.
Since then, Biden has only held one formal press conference, taking questions from reporters for nearly two hours on Jan. 19.
Former President Donald Trump, by comparison, routinely engaged with reporters, often as he was coming and going from the White House, holding impromptu question-and-answer sessions.
Several Republicans have recently voiced concerns, again, about the president’s mental capacity to hold press conferences and to interact with reporters and world leaders.
Earlier this week, a group of GOP lawmakers led by Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas, a former White House physician, sent a letter to Biden asking him to submit to a cognitive exam.
Nearly 40 GOP congressional members want the president, 79, to follow the precedent set by his predecessor, as recent polling increasingly shows more Americans are not certain of Biden’s mental fitness for the demanding job of president.
The Republican lawmakers said that they had “concern” about his “current cognitive state.”
“My colleagues and I are again asking President Biden to immediately undergo a formal cognitive screening exam, such as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MOCA),” Jackson told Fox News Digital in an email.
“As a former physician to three Presidents of the United States, I know what it takes mentally and physically to execute the duties of Commander-in-Chief and Head of State,” Jackson added. “Joe Biden has continually proven to me and to the world that something isn’t right. The American people deserve to have absolute confidence in their President’s cognitive ability.”
The Texas Republican said taking “the cognitive test will be an important first step” for the president to reassure concerned Americans that he is fit for office or “in identifying and properly treating symptoms of impairment that are consistent with a variety of cognitive diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, vascular dementia, Parkinson’s, or multiple sclerosis.”
“This is not a partisan issue. When I discussed taking a cognitive test with President Trump, he was eager to assure the American people and to put the fake news media’s stories to bed,” Jackson wrote. “Why won’t President Biden do the same?
“We can only assume the worst if he doesn’t submit to the same standard that his own party demanded of the last Administration,” he noted further. “The precedent has been set.”
