Joe Biden waited nearly four decades to become the most powerful man in the free world. Now that he is, he’s making himself scarce.
Biden is leaning on doctors and health experts to publicly detail his Covid policy. He’s relying on his Cabinet, economic advisers and other high-ranking administration officials to help sell his nearly $2 trillion rescue package. Biden’s press team, meanwhile, is standing in for their boss by blanketing TV programs with pledges to tell the truth even when it’s inconvenient. It’s one of the more arresting shifts after four years of a president who delighted in torturing the media with sudden pronouncements that often surprised and befuddled his own advisers.
Why you haven't seen a sit-down President Joe Biden interview yet
The new president is most definitely not his predecessor, especially when it comes to media presence.
“He trusts them, and Americans will trust experts,” John Anzalone, a top Biden adviser and campaign pollster, said of the president's approach to his team. “Plus,” he added, “Biden is dealing with multiple crises and is a good delegator.”
White House aides describe the strategy not so much as delegation but as an concerted effort to restore confidence with a public battered by the contradictory messaging and scorched-earth politics of the Trump years. In just over a week, the White House has booked 80 TV and radio interviews with 20 senior administration officials, members of the Covid-19 response team and Cabinet secretary designates. They’ve had officials on each major network, booking them on every Sunday show in the first week. And they worked with CNN to have three of the doctors in charge of its Covid-19 response take questions from the public during a coronavirus town hall, said Mariel Sáez, the White House director of broadcast media.
Who’s not been booked for any sit-down interviews: Biden.
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But the president hasn’t exactly been absent either. He appeared for brief ceremonies where he signed executive orders and delivered mostly scripted remarks. He’s taken a handful of questions from the news media. And he’s expected to give a major foreign policy address on Monday amid a planned trip to the State Department, his first visit to a Cabinet agency.
As main protagonists go, Biden’s role has been comparatively limited — a startling contrast to the omnipresent president who preceded him. Donald Trump didn’t so much love the spotlight as he sought to totally consume it. Whether he was sending Twitter screeds at all hours or shouting answers over the ear-splitting blades of his presidential aircraft, Trump craved media attention like no American leader before him.
Biden’s current approach is nearly the antithesis. It also stands in contrast to how he operated earlier in his career. As a senator, he was known for his loquaciousness. As vice president, there was an ever-simmering fear in the White House that he would trample on the message of the day with his proclivity to freelance (a fear that often did not become realized).
Biden’s own White House aides are now as ubiquitous as he is, some perhaps even more so. Already, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, domestic policy adviser Susan Rice, economic adviser Brian Deese and climate heads John Kerry and Gina McCarthy have cycled through the White House briefing room to answer questions. Press Secretary Jen Psaki was non-committal as to when Biden may be taking questions there, offering that they are always looking for opportunities to do so. Trump, during his early time in office, brought the cameras in for his sit down with automobile industry leaders as well as union leaders and workers. He did the same for speeches at the CIA and DHS, and traveled to Philadelphia for a televised address to the congressional GOP retreat. Whereas Biden has not done a television interview, Trump had conducted three by this point in his presidency.