White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield was not exactly truthful during a Friday interview on MSNBC about President Joe Biden's approach to taking White House reporters' questions.
"Morning Joe" host Willie Geist asked Bedingfield if Biden will take questions after he is done speaking about the deteriorating situation in Kabul as the U.S. military is trying to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies to save them from the Taliban. While Biden conducted a sit-down interview with ABC News, he has not taken questions from members of the White House press corps after giving two speeches this past week.
"Kate, before we let you go, will President Biden after his remarks today take questions? He’s given a couple of speeches, he did the interview with ABC News, but the White House press corps and the American people have direct questions for him. Will he take those today?" Geist asked.
"The President never shies away from taking questions, I’ll let him make a decision if is gonna take questions this afternoon. But you saw, he just did a full sit-down interview on this just yesterday. So he is always willing to take questions and I'll let him decide if he’s going to do that after his remarks today," Bedingfield replied.
WH Comms Director Kate Bedingfield: "The president never shies away from taking questions." pic.twitter.com/KNkSqyCgtU
— America Rising (@AmericaRising) August 20, 2021
Joe Biden leaves the podium without taking a SINGLE question: pic.twitter.com/yQNQTgE2ks
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) August 16, 2021
Biden walks away from the podium after talking about vaccines and mask mandates for 15 minutes.
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) August 18, 2021
Not a single question.
No mention of the crisis in Afghanistan.
Shameful. pic.twitter.com/Achkeef5US
It is worth noting it took Biden until the end of March to host his first solo press conference, which was much later than many of his predecessors. They gave solo press conferences within their first 33 days of entering into office, according to CNN, while it took Biden 64 days to host such an event.
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