White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt presented a compelling statistic about how accessible President Donald Trump has been just a year into taking office and how little the public ever saw former President Joe Biden during his term.
While speaking at a media event hosted by Axios co-founder Mike Allen, Leavitt highlighted the contrast between President Donald Trumpβs accessibility and that of Biden. She also pointed out that many in the media overlooked Bidenβs avoidance of the media and his largely βhidingβ behavior during his four years in office.
βYou have tailed access to the βAssociated Press,β which reaches half the worldβs population every day. The most definitive photo of President Trump, the fight, fight, fight photo after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, was made by Evan Vucci, whoβs the chief photographer in Washington for the βAssociated Press.β Do you worry about history being lost with these new restrictions?β Allen asked Leavitt.
βI donβt view them as restrictions. We view them as opening access to more outlets, more voices, more news, journalists and outlets. We shouldnβt have a few outlets who have a monopoly over the briefing room or over that 13 person press pool that covers the president. And so weβve actually ensured that more print outlets like Axios have a greater chance of being part of that 13 person press pool,β Leavitt began.
βThere are thousands of outlets who have White House press credentials. There are hundreds that actually show up every day and cover the beat. Why should a single outlet have the privilege of being in that 13 person press pool every single day. And so the changes weβve made have actually created more transparency, more accessibility, and greater access for a broad variety of outlets and a diversity of journalists, which I think is a good thing. And weβve seen that play out,β Leavitt added.
βI mean, we started this. I think youβre all still getting your news, right? Youβre still hearing about what the administration is doing every single day, because we have good journalists who are in that room covering the president every single time,β Leavitt said.
Allen jumped in and asked: βThe counter to that is in a White House Correspondents Associationβs statement about the White House changes to the position of wire services in the pool. And the statement says the government should not be able to control the independent media that covers it. Do you agree with that statement?β
βWell, I think that a small group of journalists who comprise the board of the White House Correspondents Association should not dictate who gets to go into the Oval Office and who gets to ride on Air Force One. There should be equal access for all outlets,β Leavitt responded.
βAnd thatβs exactly what weβre doing. And if we were trying, by the way, to create positive press for the president, if we were trying to make it easier on him or on the administration, we wouldnβt allow some of these fake news leftist outlets in. But we continue to do that. No one has been restricted. Weβve just given more spots to more outlets and more voices,β she said.
Leavitt concluded, βItβs not about ideology. Itβs just about increasing the wide variety of outlets that have access. And we live in a digital age, and weβre recognizing that at the White House. The president ran a nontraditional media campaign, which propelled him back to the highest office in the land. And we felt it was our responsibility to continue that in our coverage at the White House.β
In July, Axios published a story titled βBidenβs media evasion,β revealing that the Democrat held fewer press conferences and media interviews than any of the last seven presidents at the same point in their term. At that time, Biden had conducted only 164, compared to Trumpβs 468.
The next lowest were George W. Bush with 248 and Ronald Reagan with 262.
