No president is perfect.
Even George Washington had his faults; the greatest in our history from Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump have still had flaws.
However, there are clearly leaders who fall far below the mark and raise protest by their sheer distance from the people and lack of communication or leadership.
One of them is Joe Biden and even CNN is beginning to take notice and get annoyed.
CNN’s Getting Tired of Biden Ducking Questions
Jeff Zeleny with CNN got annoyed lately when talking about how Biden communicates. Simple: he doesn’t. Whenever Biden’s about to answer a question or provide any actual insights (such as into yesterday’s highly important meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin), his staff steps in and “protects” him from answering questions.
It’s not democracy, and it’s certainly not the transparency that Biden promised during his election campaign.
It looks a lot like a senile old man being shielded from questions by handlers who are worried he might go off script in some way…and that’s just sad – and also bad for this country.
CNN on Biden: “I have never seen a president… who is so protected by his aides in terms of often not wanting him to answer some questions.”
— Abigail Marone (@abigailmarone) June 16, 2021
During his solo press conference after meeting Putin in Geneva, Biden took a list of questions from pre-selected members of the media; he also took a couple spontaneous ones including from Peter Doocy of Fox News and Kaitlan Collins of CNN.
Biden got annoyed at Doocy for asking him a hard question about Russia. He started arguing with Collins when she challenged his belief that Putin will just adapt his “behavior” because Biden says so.
POTUS accused Collins of being “in the wrong business” and insulted her as a reporter. Remember the media outcry whenever Trump used to criticize the media?
Protecting Biden
As Zeleny points out, none of us have had the chance to see him respond to hard questions without his staffers telling him to stop.
As Zeleny said, Biden is the most protected president he’s seen, constantly protected and shielded from access by his staff.
Biden just yelled at CNN's @kaitlancollins:
"What the hell— what do you do all day?… If you don't understand that, you're in the wrong business." pic.twitter.com/XNF4LMKYzr
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) June 16, 2021
He never even took a press conference for two months after becoming POTUS and he was treated like an innocent little baby without any ability to think or speak for himself. Biden couldn’t face the harsh glare of the media or critical questions.
The problem is that the real world – and leaders like Vladimir Putin – don’t work that way. You can bring cue cards or get your staff to fawn over you, but at the end of the day there’s no option B where you can just say you’re tired and go home to the White House for a nap instead.
America needs to have a real president again.
