Axios' Jonathan Swan blasts Biden for 'repeatedly' refusing interviews: 'He won't do it'

Axios reporter Jonathan Swan called out President Joe Biden and his handlers on Thursday for "repeatedly" refusing to sit down with him for an interview.

In a series of tweets, Swan – who conducted a high-profile and viral interview with former President Donald Trump in 2020 – blasted politicians who won’t be compelled to do "challenging" interviews with the press any longer. 

He mentioned politicians in general are prone to refusing interviews these days and offered Biden’s reluctance to have an interview with him as his personal experience with the trend. 

Swan’s first tweet addressing the issue claimed that politicians don’t seem to care whether large news outlets want to interview them on television. They can’t be compelled. 

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He wrote, "Side note on this debate about GOP engagement w the press: Convening power for television interviewing is dead. It was slowly dying for more than a decade and now no longer exists. Nobody has the power to compel a politician to do a challenging interview." 

Swan then slammed Biden for refusing to do any interviews with him, noting that he has tried multiple times. He also accused Biden’s handlers of being too worried such an interview would depict him in a way they don’t have control over.

"I say this as somebody who has tried repeatedly to get a one-on-one interview with Joe Biden. He won’t do it. And there’s no convening power on planet earth that could compel him to do an interview that his advisers deem to be unsafe," Swan stated.

He added, "This is of course true of many politicians."

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Swan’s tweets seem to echo other outlets criticisms of Biden’s unavailability to the press. For instance, in 2021, Fox News Digital reported that Biden went 48 days since his inauguration as President without having a single press conference. 

All three prior administrations spoke to the press much sooner after taking office. 

Another Fox News Digital report from May 2022 indicated that Biden had gone "over 100 days without doing any mainstream media interviews." At the time, Fox News contributor Joe Concha told "Fox & Friends First," "If you don't do an interview in 102 days, that shows that his handlers are petrified he'll say things like he just said about defending Taiwan, for example, because that requires a cleanup on aisle five."

In contrast, former President Trump made himself available for an interview with Swan three months during ahead the of the 2020 election. Trump’s interview with Axios, which aired on HBO, featured both parties clashing over the former president’s handling of the coronavirus, and his reaction to the death of Congressman John Lewis, D-Ga.

The interview resulted in some negative coverage for the former president, something Swan’s latest tweet seems to indicate Biden’s people would never risk. 

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