There's many areas in which President Donald Trump's second term should be welcomed especially with now former President Joe Biden having served in between his two terms. Chief among them is press accessibility. After we were gaslit for the Biden-Harris administration on how available the president at the time was, Trump has turned out to be a particularly available president, something even POLITICO has been willing to admit.
The Wednesday morning POLITICO Playbook edition focused on "The sound of silence," which referred to how Trump dared to go a couple of days without speaking to the press.
As was mentioned [with original emphasis]:
THE SOUND OF SILENCE: By lunchtime today it will have been 48 hours since Donald Trump stepped in front of a TV camera for a speech or Q&A — the first time that’s happened (outside of the weekends) since he returned to the White House on Jan. 20. Whatever your politics, that’s a remarkable record of public availability, especially when compared to his famously sheltered predecessor. And look how that turned out.
By the numbers: A quick trawl through the archives suggests Trump 2.0 has done media on 111 of his 138 days back in office — an 80 percent hit rate that includes weekends and must put him on course to being just about the most-accessible president in modern history. And aside from the lamentable attempt to ban AP, he’s basically taken questions from all-comers. It’s impressive stuff.
And it matters: In case anyone still needs this hammering home for them, the Joe Biden experience shows just how important it is that leaders are held up to regular scrutiny. Trump’s answers may sometimes be rambling, erratic — or even downright unpleasant — but every American voter can see where he’s at.
To call Biden "famously sheltered," is putting it extremely politely, but the Playbook does at least link to an excerpt from Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's recently released book, "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again," which from even just the book description, puts the blame on Biden for Trump winning a second term.
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POLITICO Playbook writers go on to praise Trump for his numbers, doing media on 111 of his 138 days of his second term, emphasizing that this 80 percent hit rate "includes weekends and must put him on course to being just about the most-accessible president in modern history." They even note that "[i]t's impressive stuff."
Over X on Wednesday afternoon, CNN's Scott Jennings shared a screenshot of this excerpt. To make it even better, it was a quoted repost of NewsBusters' Jorge Bonilla from February when Brian Stelter, back on the network, claimed that "that's not true" when it comes to Jennings' point at the time on how accessible Trump is, especially in comparison to Biden.
Quick update from @politico https://t.co/zaou0SKIuK pic.twitter.com/q9eV1z8qLL
— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) May 28, 2025
The next point from Playbook brings us back to "Original Sin," specifically the issue with Tapper and how he himself played such a key role in covering up or the Biden. If it's so important for leaders to be "held up to regular scrutiny," as the Playbook mentions, then why wasn't that the case for Biden?
Even from the start of his term, Biden was called out for being one of the least transparent presidents, from the low amount of interviews he did, to even going months without press conferences, and again, this was at the start of his term. But Trump's dared to go 48-hours?
As was often the case throughout Biden's term, especially towards the end of it, then White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was particularly involved in gaslighting the American people, including and especially about Biden's press access. She even laughably claimed in 2023 that Biden was a transparent president because he took an "unprecedented" amount of shouted questions, a claim that was fact-checked as false by Townhall at the time.
KJP LAST MONTH: It's "unprecedented that a president takes as many shouted questions" as Joe Biden.
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) May 8, 2023
BIDEN TODAY: *scurries from the podium as reporters shout questions* pic.twitter.com/HVKyQSxzoq
There were plenty of times when Biden didn't take questions, and how that spoke volumes, including the notorious image of his back turned as she shuffled out of the room when giving remarks about the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal that happened under his watch in August 2021.
And, when Biden did take questions, it was a very bad look. We sometimes heard how he'd get into trouble with his handlers for doing so, and he was also spotted with notecards serving as cheat sheets, such as during a press briefing in April 2023. In February of last year, after the Robert Hur report had been released, Biden not only got snippy with reporters as he took questions at a press briefing considered past his bedtime, he mixed up the presidents of Egypt and Mexico.
Joe Biden gets caught RED-HANDED using a CHEAT SHEET of reporters INCLUDING the very questions that they're going to ask...
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) April 26, 2023
...and the reporters go along with it! pic.twitter.com/bWT5ae1Qow
Biden mixes up the presidents of Mexico and Egypt when discussing the conflict in Israel and the Gaza strip:
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) February 9, 2024
"As you know, initially, the president of Mexico El-Sisi, did not want to open up the gate to allow humanitarian material to get in. I talked to him, I convinced him to… pic.twitter.com/stbbNAMK3x
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