Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has not held a press conference in more than a month. While Biden has hosted some virtual events and given a handful of interviews to friendly media outlets, the candidate has been largely spared the traditional media exposure candidates typically face during an election year.
The former vice president's gaffes, while not completely absent these days, have become less noticeable as Biden hunkers down in his Delaware basement. Biden's insulation from the media comes at a time when the sexual-assault allegation against the candidate appears bolstered by new evidence. It also doesn't help that Biden can't stop saying the word intercourse.
As Fox News's Brian Flood reports, Biden's critics are taking notice of the candidate's inaccessibility.
(Via Fox News)
“The Biden camp is hoping to employ the ‘Vanna White effect,’ in which you say little and let the audience project on to you a favorable impression. But this strategy will be less effective for a national political candidate than for a game show hostess,” DePauw University professor and media critic Jeffrey McCall told Fox News.
Over the past month, the former vice president has appeared on ABC’s “This Week,” “NBC’s “Today,” CBS’s “Late Late Show with James Cordon” and spoke with CNN’s Anderson Cooper and MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace. Biden also appeared on CBS’s local Miami affiliate and talked to soccer star Megan Rapinoe on Instagram. But none of the appearances offered the scrutiny that Biden would face if he were on the campaign trail, where reporters can approach him on a regular basis.
"The White House Press corps is openly hostile and aggressive towards Donald Trump during scheduled and impromptu press interactions. If Joe Biden wants to prove he has the cognitive and political chops to be president, he's going to have to expose himself to the press gaggle, not just sit for interviews with friendly reporters," Cornell Law School professor and media critic William A. Jacobson told Fox News.
In his most publicized interview in recent weeks, Biden sat down with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski last week to address sexual assault accusations against him made by former Senate staffer Tara Reade. Biden denied Reade’s claims, and while Brzezinski was praised for going harder on Biden than most expected, she did not ask about particular elements of the story.
While Biden may be enjoying a temporary reprieve from the media, there is new evidence to suggest that the candidate's reluctance to face the music may be catching up to him. In a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, the edge Biden once enjoyed appears to have evaporated as more Americans now trust President Trump to respond to the coronavirus and lead the nation's economic recovery. As vice president, Joe Biden presided over the slowest economic recovery since World War II, so it only makes sense most Americans aren't all that excited to return to those same failed economic policies.
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