Kayleigh McEnany says she had 'warned reporters' that Biden would not be accessible: 'The basement strategy'
Joe Biden was inaugurated as president of the United States on January 20, 2021. Since then, he is yet to give his first, solo press conference. By this point in their respective presidencies, former presidents Donald Trump, Barack Obama and George W Bush had all given their solo press conferences. However, Biden is yet to address the press even once and has drawn quite some flak for it.
During her recent appearance on Fox News, former White House Press Secretary and now Fox News contributor Kayleigh McEnany said she had "warned" reporters that Biden would not be accessible as a president.
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When asked about President Biden not giving a single press conference to date and only taking quick questions, McEnany went on to criticize him. For context, she was shown a clip of Biden's Press Secretary Jen Psaki saying that she will ask the president about the conference.
"I actually warned some of the reporters there in the press corps," McEnany said after watching the clip. "In the waning days of the Trump administration, he didn't do as much press availabilities every day as he walked to [Marine One] or those press conferences."
Adding to that thought, she said, "I said to the correspondents, 'You're getting a little taste of what it will be like in the Biden administration,'" she added. "I said I wouldn’t expect to see much of him. We haven't. We're still waiting on that solo press conference, we're still waiting for the day, apparently by the end of the month."
This is not the first time that McEnany has blasted Biden. A few days ago, she told Fox Business that Biden’s lack of press conferences was "extraordinary" but "not unprecedented."
"You'll recall… the 'basement strategy' is what he employed on the campaign trail," she said, referring to then-candidate Biden doing press conferences from his basement. "He went something like 50 days and he only took questions twice. And when he did, they were hand-picked questions."
Adding that she thinks his staffers are keeping him away from the press, she said, "I think his staff does not have faith that he can stand at the podium and have a press conference the way President Trump did many times. I don’t think this is President Biden saying, 'I don’t want to do this'. I think it's those around him recognizing when he does speak, it doesn’t always turn out so well, like calling Republicans 'Neanderthals' as he did recently in the Oval Office."
More promises
"The pressure is mounting when you have even left-wing outlets calling him out for this," she said. Trump held his first formal news conference 27 days after assuming the presidency while President Barack Obama did the same 20 days after taking office. George W Bush waited 33 days before hosting a formal conference.
At the same time, in the midst of surmounting pressure, last week, the White House pledged that Biden would hold a news conference before this month was out. But they are still to announce a date. It did schedule his first primetime address for Thursday, March 11, though, "to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Covid-19 shutdown."