Biden shies away from news conferences, interviews

WASHINGTON — In what’s become a familiar scene, President Joe Biden lingered after delivering a recent speech on the pandemic as reporters fired a barrage of questions.

He bristled at a query about the shortage of COVID-19 rapid tests, answered another about omicron-spurred travel restrictions and sidestepped a third about whether Sen. Joe Manchin failed to keep his word when he torpedoed Biden’s social services and climate spending plan.

“I’m not supposed to be having this press conference right now,” Biden said at the end of a meandering response that didn’t directly answer the question about Manchin.

Seconds later, Biden turned and walked out of the State Dining Room, abruptly ending what’s become his preferred method for his limited engagements with the press.

As Biden wraps up his first year in the White House, he has held fewer news conferences than any of his five immediate predecessors at the same point in their presidencies, and has participated in fewer media interviews than any of his recent predecessors.

Biden does more frequently field questions at public appearances than any of his recent predecessors, according to new research published by Martha Joynt Kumar, a professor emerita in political science at Towson University and director of the White House Transition Project.

He routinely pauses to talk to reporters who shout questions over Marine One’s whirring propellers as he comes and goes from the White House. He parries with journalists at Oval Office photo ops and other events. But these exchanges have their limitations.

Biden has done just 22 media interviews, fewer than any of his six most recent White House predecessors at the same point in their presidencies.

The 46th president has held just nine formal news conferences — six solo and three jointly with visiting foreign leaders.