Ari Fleischer calls out 'embarrassing' ice cream questions to Biden
Fox News contributor Ari Fleischer said mainstream media reporters seem to not want to ask President Joe Biden any tough questions.
Fox News contributor Ari Fleischer said Friday that questions about President Biden's ice cream flavor of choice was "embarrassing" and indicative of the soft coverage the White House has enjoyed in its first months in office.
"I'm just shaking my head," he said on "The Faulkner Focus." "I’m so used to the press dishing it out and being tough on presidents because that’s what they do when there is a Republican president, and then you see this? I get there are sometimes occasional light-hearted moments between the White House press corps and the president, but this is becoming a habit between the press and Joe Biden. It's embarrassing."
The press inquiring about Biden's ice cream during a stop in Ohio – it was chocolate-chocolate-chip – comes shortly after some members laughed when he joked about running over a journalist in a truck he test-drove earlier this month. Some critics noted the stark contrast in tone to the more mutually antagonistic nature of the Trump-era press corps.
PRESS ADMONISHED FOR FAWNING COVERAGE OF BIDEN ICE CREAM PIT STOP: ‘OUR MEDIA IS SO EMBARRASSING’
"It would be one thing if these were occasionally little bursts of humor and part of daily life that was in the mix of tough, ongoing, regular coverage but it's not," Fleischer said.
A recent PEW survey found Biden had the least amount of negative coverage from major publications over the first 60 days of his administration of any president over the past 30 years.
"Where is the press? Where are they asking hard, in-your-face questions regularly? That’s their job. They certainly don’t seem to want to do it when Joe Biden is the president, not at least according to PEW, and that’s pretty scientific," Fleischer said.
The press wasn't done on Thursday afternoon with providing ice cream coverage of the president. MSNBC's Ali Velshi opened his hour subbing for Rachel Maddow with a three-minute analysis of Biden's fondness of the dessert.
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It's been a tough week for the mainstream press, which is dealing with embarrassing reversals on prior pronouncements that the coronavirus lab-leak hypothesis was a debunked conspiracy theory.
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