Tipsheet

Despite Having His Answers Pre-Written, Biden's Press Conference Still Went Off the Rails

Spencer Brown
Spencer Brown  |  March 29, 2022 7:00 AM

It's no secret at this point that President Biden isn't great at facing reporters, nor is it a secret that his staff does everything they can to try and limit their boss' exposure to questions. Normally, White House reporters only get Biden's back as he walks out of the room following remarks without responding to shouted questions, but every now and then he decides to face the music. Whenever he does, things seem to go off the rails no matter how hard his staff — or whoever is running the show — may try to avoid it.

Thanks to a photo snapped during Monday's event at the White House where President Biden made remarks on his budget for the next fiscal year, we have a better idea of how the White House prepares Biden for questions — preparation that again was all for naught as Biden failed to stick to his one-sentence talking point he clutched in his hand.

Yep, Biden had a cheat-sheet — much like the ones his staff has given him in the past with a list of reporters he's supposed to call on — with what he was supposed to say in response to questions that were obviously going to arise about Biden's off-the-cuff remark about how Vladimir Putin couldn't be allowed to remain in power in Russia. 

Titled "Tough Putin Q&A Talking Points" the cheat sheet is a laughable exercise in staffers' futility when it comes to keeping Biden on-message. The "tough" question the White House apparently feared: "If you weren't advocating for regime change, what did you mean? Can you clarify?"

First, that's not a tough question. It's what anyone could have expected to see Biden be asked after his speech in Warsaw sent the West Wing, State Department, and others in the Biden administration scrambling to walk-back Biden's statement. But the White House was concerned enough to give Biden two one-sentence points. "I was expressing the moral outrage I felt toward the actions of this man," is one, "I was not articulating a change in policy," was the other. 

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This shouldn't have been difficult. It's not the first time Biden made a mess of what were prewritten remarks by going rogue and riffing from his own mind that necessitated some clean up on aisle Biden. The cheat sheet gave Biden exactly what he needed to say in order to clarify that the United States' position on Putin was not his personal feelings that were expressed in Warsaw. Just two sentences were all Biden needed to say and stick to. But he didn't. 

Despite the best efforts of whoever has the undesirable job of trying to keep him on track, the predictable question was asked, and Joe Biden still went off the rails and doubled-down on his statement in Warsaw, as Katie reported Monday. He managed to read from his cheat sheet, but he said he wasn't walking anything back. 

Biden's inability to stay on message or avoid straying into rambling incoherence is less newsworthy — he's been doing that since he was VP under Obama — but the fact that the President needs a cheat sheet to remember an eight-word statement is a little concerning. Especially when the needed help is on a pretty critical issue and not just some obscure talking point. 

The rest of Biden's supposedly "tough" Q&A with reporters on Monday was more of the same mess as Biden oscillated between scowling at reporters and grinning in the middle of their questions and continued to deny the reality of what he had said while in Europe that contradicted what his administration had stated as the policy of the United States.