First Lady Jill Biden scolded White House advisers after they allowed her husband, President Joe Biden, to participate in a news conference where he made a series of gaffes.
‘Why didn’t anyone stop that?’ the first lady demanded, after the president and his aides met following a 2022 press conference that lasted more than two hours.
The president made several factual errors, including erroneous reference to a visit to an AstraZeneca factory, the amount of money sent to Ukraine and the number of Americans vaccinated against COVID-19.
US President Joe Biden speaks about the special counsel’s report in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on February 8, 2024.
Jill Biden fiercely protects her husband’s time and schedule
New York Times reporter Katie Rogers details the story in her book ‘American Woman,’ out February 27. The details were first shared with Axios.
‘Where were you guys?’ the first lady asked Biden’s aides after the press conference, including then-White House press secretary Jennifer Psaki. ‘Where was the person who was going to finish the press conference?’
Aides had handed the president a card informing him that it was time to end the press conference, but he continued, after receiving criticism from the media for refusing to answer questions from White House reporters.
Reports of the first lady’s frustration with staff first emerged in October 2022, when she expressed displeasure after the marathon press conference.
The story is yet another example of how the first lady acts as the president’s guardian and fiercely protects his time and scheduled events.
The first lady reportedly reminds Democrats of her husband’s accomplishments, his travel schedule and his victory over Donald Trump as they share concerns about the president’s age.
In her memoir, ‘Where the Light Comes in,’ the first lady explained why she was the ‘grudge holder’ when her husband was more forgiving.
‘I’m the one who wants to go up the hill to confront the bad boy. “I remember every slight committed against the people I love,” she wrote.
“I can forgive, of course, but I don’t believe in rewarding bad behavior,” he added.
On Thursday, Biden held another messy news conference in which he insisted that “my memory is fine,” even as he mistakenly referred to Egypt’s president as Mexico’s president.
His comments came after special prosecutor Robert Hur wrote in an explosive report that the “elderly” president could not remember when his son Beau died.
The shocking details were included in Hur’s 388-page report released Thursday about Biden’s “intentional mishandling” of classified documents.
President Joe Biden kisses First Lady Jill Biden before boarding Marine One on January 29, 2021
President Joe Biden pauses as he listens to a question about the Kabul airport bombings that killed at least 12 U.S. service members, from the East Room of the White House, Thursday, Aug. 26, 2021.
According to the report, Biden could not remember when his son Beau died, “not even within a few years.”
‘How the hell dare you bring that up? Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought, ‘It was none of his business,'” Biden said of the special counsel.
Biden then answered a question about the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
In doing so, he failed to identify a world leader, calling the Egyptian Abdel Fattah El-Sisi president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
He said: ‘I think, as you know, initially, the president of Mexico, El-Sisi, did not want to open the door for humanitarian material to come in. I talked to him. I convinced him to open the door.
The confusion with El-Sisi could have gone unnoticed after a week. Many politicians occasionally get names wrong when speaking in public, as the White House noted Thursday.