President Joseph Robinette Biden [*] was sworn into office as the nation’s Chief Executive at noon on January 20, 2021. The first time a newly installed presidential administration does something is newsworthy. The first foreign trip, for instance, or the first State of the Union Address. And then there’s the very first time the newly sworn-in President faces news media reporters and takes their questions.
Former Presidents Trump, Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton all held their first press conferences within the very first month of their presidencies. Trump held his first presidential press conference on February 16, 2017, about 3 weeks into his term. Former President Barack Obama also held his first presser as President about 3 weeks into his first term, facing reporters on February 9, 2009. George W. Bush did his on February 22, 2001. And Bill Clinton faced the press for the first time as a new President on March 22, 1993, just over two full months from his inauguration, so there is some precedent for a new President delaying his initial presser into late March. But I’ll point out that Clinton, for all his faults, didn’t have the kind of questions swirling around him about his election victory or his mental acuity that Biden does.
Having installed a frail and elderly man suffering from cognitive issues in the White House through a stolen election is turning out to be a pyrrhic victory for the Democratic Party. In the end, it may turn out to have been better for the Democrats just to let Donald J. Trump have that second term. Instead, they have awakened a raging monster in millions of Americans who are determined to restore election integrity in this country and to do it well in advance of the 2022 midterm and 2024 national elections.
Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a ‘Pyrrhic victory’ this way:
“We define Pyrrhic victory as “a victory that is not worth winning because so much is lost to achieve it.” The word comes from the name of Pyrrhus, a long-ago king of Epirus, who suffered heavy losses in defeating the Romans at Asculum in Apulia in 279 B.C.E.”
Hiding Biden Has Backfired on This White House
Biden's team hid him for 64 days. When they were finally forced to bring him out for his introductory press conference due to several mounting national crises, it was an unmitigated disaster. By delaying the new president's first press conference in this present climate, Biden's team ended up ensuring that it would receive an inordinate amount of attention.
Had Team Biden bit the bullet and gotten the first presser over with back in February, by late March, there would not have been near as much interest in this press conference that Biden was being forced to hold in order to address the growing border situation that his administration still refuses to admit is a real crisis.
After Trump handed off a stable border where illegal crossings were down, Biden arrogantly scrapped all the agreements the Trump White House had worked out with Mexico and the Central American nations such as Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. It didn’t take long for the results of Biden’s total reversal of Trump’s border policies to begin showing up. At present, depending on where you look, the number of unaccompanied minor children being intercepted at the US southern border is between 14,000 or as high as 19,000.
In recent days both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris [*] have rolled their eyes at questions about when they intend to visit the border. They have held to a White House strategy of downplaying the crisis for more than a month. Yet if there was no crisis, why was Biden finally being trotted out for his long-awaited inaugural press conference?
Despite A Perfect Set-Up to Ensure A Stellar Performance, Biden Fumbled
It certainly didn’t help the Harris/Biden administration that the 77-year-old President [*] put on such a bad performance on Thursday afternoon.
How badly did Biden blow this initial press conference?
- Carefully selected reporters in the sparsely populated room.
- Biden having circled photographs showing him which reporters he was supposed to call on and the order in which he was to call upon them.
- All the questions prepared in advance through coordination between Biden’s staff & the circled reporters.
- Notes that alerted him to what the reporter’s questions would be.
- And with carefully prepared answers to read out in response to the prepared questions he knew were coming...
President Biden[*] still ended up visibly lost and struggling more than a few times. He looked especially lost as he claimed to reporters that the current-border-crisis-that-isn’t-a-crisis is all former President Trump’s fault.
Why Biden’s Press Conference Performance Matters
The American people need confidence that the nation’s top Executive Officer can handle anything the world tosses at him. After watching that disaster of a press conference, how many people have the utmost confidence that current President Joe Biden[*] can handle anything thrown at him by Russia, Iran, or China? Russian President Vladimir Putin has especially been vocal in pushing back at criticism from Biden. Biden, of course, quickly retreated and didn’t respond when Putin offered to face him in a live and unscripted debate.
We also recently watched the travesty of the supposedly crack Biden, foreign policy team, setting up a meeting with top CCP counterparts in Anchorage, Alaska, and then getting totally humiliated on their home turf. When Biden Secretary of State Anthony Blinken tried to chide his Chinese guests in the mildest of terms for the CCP’s brutal treatment of the Uighur people and for the forced labor the entire world knows is going on in China, the CCP diplomats completely rejected any criticism and fired back that the United States is a country full of racism and violence and it should mind its own business. The CCP diplomats also alleged that the US team wasn’t following ‘the proper diplomatic protocols'. And of course, one of the first foreign policy moves of the Biden administration was to commit to scrapping Trump’s Iranian sanctions and restarting the disastrous Iran Deal.
Far from dealing with threats, in just over two full months in office, Biden has managed to reignite the border crisis and return to the Obama foreign policy of cluelessly stumbling around and trying to do bribery deals with ruthless regimes. That’s not a look that is going to instill a lot of confidence in this President as far as the American people are concerned.
Sure, the corporate mainstream news media will write the usual laudatory think pieces and opinion columns about what a terrific job the Harris/Biden administration is doing. But will enough people be fooled into thinking we have a President residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that we can have full confidence in? Time will tell. But I don’t like the Harris/Biden administration’s chances.