{"id":24667,"date":"2024-03-10T01:59:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-10T07:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=24667"},"modified":"2024-03-10T01:59:57","modified_gmt":"2024-03-10T07:59:57","slug":"helicopter-carrying-national-guardsmen-and-border-patrol-agent-crashes-in-texas-killing-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=24667","title":{"rendered":"Helicopter carrying National Guardsmen and Border Patrol agent crashes in Texas, killing 3"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Months out from November\u2019s high-stakes election, the White House and the Biden <\/a>campaign are going public with growing frustration about how the president is being portrayed in the media. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden\u2019s camp is taking swings at press coverage of the incumbent as his reelection bid fends off persistent concerns about whether the 81-year-old is fit for another four years in the Oval Office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Democrats have been sensitive to media coverage of former President Trump compared with that of their own candidates dating back to the 2016 campaign, when critics argued the press overhyped the controversy around then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton\u2019s <\/a>private email server while giving Trump significant, unfiltered airtime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, some Biden allies see a similar pattern playing out in which reporters fixate on the president\u2019s periodic verbal slips and questions about his age while his likely November opponent faces dozens of felonies and suggests he would undermine international alliances and crackdown on immigrants and abortion access.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The president\u2019s personal attorney this week penned an op-ed<\/a> criticizing coverage of a special counsel report that commented on Biden\u2019s recall, and The New York Times\u2019s publisher said in a recent interview that the White House is \u201cextremely upset<\/a>\u201d about reporting on Biden\u2019s age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe more this campaign and the more this White House takes the gloves off and gets aggressive, the better off they are,\u201d said Democratic strategist Jon Reinish. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere have been many instances on many tough issues where they\u2019ve been behind the ball and have not been nearly as sharp, nearly as persuasive or nearly as aggressive as they could have been.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the face of poor approval numbers<\/a> and worries about whether Biden could serve another term, more direct pushback from the president\u2019s camp against coverage and critiques could help build up a sense of Biden\u2019s strength, Reinish said, adding that he hopes \u201cit\u2019s not too late\u201d to make the moves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Special counsel Robert Hur released a lengthy report earlier this month that concluded Biden would not face any charges for his handling of classified documents from his time as vice president and senator. The report also made clear the distinctions between Biden\u2019s case and that of Trump, who is facing charges in Florida for his retention of and refusal to return classified materials upon leaving the White House in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, much to the White House\u2019s chagrin, a significant amount of coverage was devoted to passages that called into question Biden\u2019s ability to remember when his son died or when he served as vice president. Several media outlets also directly quoted Hur\u2019s executive summary, which said Biden \u201cwillfully retained\u201d classified documents \u2014 a point the White House took issue with, as Hur also determined there wasn\u2019t enough evidence to bring any charges against the president. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ian Sams,<\/a> spokesperson for the White House counsel\u2019s office, wrote to the president of the White House Correspondents Association \u2014 which has no control over outlets\u2019 coverage \u2014 criticizing reporting on the special counsel\u2019s findings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYour jobs are not easy. But they are important,\u201d Sams wrote in a Feb. 13 letter. \u201cWhen significant errors occur in coverage, such as essentially misstating the findings and conclusions of a federal investigation of the sitting President, it is critical that they be addressed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kelly O\u2019Donnell,<\/a> president of the White House Correspondents Association and a correspondent at NBC News, called Sams\u2019s letter \u201cmisdirected\u201d and labeled the use of internal channels to disseminate the letter \u201cinappropriate.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a Feb. 12 statement, TJ Ducklo,<\/a> a senior adviser for the Biden campaign, knocked the media for \u201cgratuitous and sensationalist attacks on the President\u2019s age\u201d after Trump suggested he\u2019d let Russia invade NATO allies who hadn\u2019t contributed enough to defense spending. Americans deserve \u201ca press corps who cover his candidacy, his comments, and his policy positions with the seriousness and ferocity this moment requires,\u201d Ducklo said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gripes with the press have continued beyond the Hur report, though. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The campaign sent out a press release criticizing The New York Times for \u201cquibbling over\u201d Biden\u2019s statements about the economy, and several Democrats rolled their eyes at a Times headline on Biden\u2019s efforts to forgive student loan debt that described the president as \u201cbeleaguered,\u201d only for it to be changed hours later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBeleaguered Biden wins second term, luckily saved by greatest job market in history and the happenstance of the strongest economic legislative record in 70 years, which by the way was in no way related to that job market. But how long can the lucky streak last?\u201d Jesse Lee, a former Biden White House adviser, wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the Hur report\u2019s scathing assessment that the incumbent was a \u201cwell-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,\u201d Biden went before reporters in a fiery press conference<\/a> to defend his age and recall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m well-meaning, and I\u2019m an elderly man, and I know what the hell I\u2019m doing,\u201d Biden said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Biden during the press conference also mistakenly referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi <\/a>as the \u201cpresident of Mexico<\/a>,\u201d a slip-up that drew scrutiny as he sharply criticized the report. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think the president overestimates his ability to handle the press at times,\u201d said Todd Belt, director of George Washington University\u2019s graduate political management program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden has appeared before the press less frequently than his predecessor, according to research<\/a> from the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Biden has averaged 11 news conferences per year, while Trump averaged 22. Before him, President Obama averaged 20 per year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Biden\u2019s administration has worked to build a press relationship in stark contrast to Trump\u2019s, which was characterized by confrontation and attacks against the \u201cfake news\u201d media, Belt said \u2014 and the incumbent\u2019s camp has likely shied away from aggressive criticism of White House coverage for that reason, hoping to avoid comparisons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey want to be able to say: Biden is normal government, Trump is chaos,\u201d Belt said.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the president and his allies may now be seeing the stakes as too high to sit back, with Trump on track to score the Republican nomination and set the 2024 race up for a Trump-Biden rematch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo president likes to be criticized or reported on or have any negatives written about them,\u201d said Leonard Steinhorn, a professor of public communication at American University. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Steinhorn noted that Trump and his camp were trying to paint<\/a> Biden as too old back in 2020 \u2014 but that Trump, who at 77 is his rival\u2019s junior by just a few years, is now as old as Biden was during the last cycle. Trump has faced scrutiny for some of his own recent gaffes, including when he mixed up former Speaker Nancy Pelosi <\/a>(D-Calif.) and his GOP primary rival, Nikki Haley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden has also been open about his speech impediment and has long made gaffes that may be more a product of his stutter than of his age. Trump\u2019s speech, by comparison, may appear more \u201cfluid,\u201d Steinhorn said, disadvantaging Biden in an arena where \u201coptics tell a story, regardless of any words we communicate or what the White House wants us to believe.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvery president has to deal with it, but that doesn\u2019t mean that the president should be silent and suck it up if they feel that they have been unfairly maligned or criticized.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

thehill<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Months out from November\u2019s high-stakes election, the White House and the Biden campaign are going public with growing frustration about how the president is being portrayed in the media.  Biden\u2019s camp is taking swings at press coverage of the incumbent as his reelection bid fends off persistent concerns about whether the 81-year-old is fit for another four […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":24670,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[27096,27095,2436,4864,3859,1298],"class_list":["post-24667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-3-people","tag-border-patrol-agent","tag-crash","tag-helicopter","tag-national-guard","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24669,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24667\/revisions\/24669"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}