President Trump has taken 555 more questions from reporters than presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden since mid-July as pressure mounts for the former vice president to face the media, according to a new study.
Biden has been criticized for weeks for declining to sit down with reporters for unscripted interviews, with everyone from far-left CNN pundits to “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace questioning his decision to avoid the press. The campaign’s decision to largely skip Sunday morning political programs on the eve of the Democratic National Convention has drawn more attention to the strategy -- and the Washington Examiner reviewed coverage to determine how much more accessible Trump is than Biden.
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“A review of interviews, transcripts, and videos shows that since mid-July, Trump has taken 635 questions from the media and Biden just 80, an 8-1 divide,” Washington Examiner columnist Paul Bedard wrote Monday in a piece headlined, “Clammed up: Trump takes 700% more questions than Biden in one month.”
“During a 28-day stretch from July 19 to Aug. 15, Trump took questions on 24 days, skipping just two weekends, while Biden took questions on 13 days,” Bedard added. “And 41 of the questions he [Biden] faced over the period came in a prerecorded interview via his computer with the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.”
Biden took questions on Monday, but they came from rapper Cardi B as opposed to a credentialted journalist.
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President Trump touched the topic earlier on Monday, claiming he “has no choice” but to campaign during the Democratic National Convention because Biden receives preferential treatment from the mainstream media.
“We have a guy that doesn’t come out of his basement and the media covers [for him],” the president said on during a phone interview on “Fox & Friends.”
“When they ask me questions, I have these people, there is fire out of their eyes ... they’re asking me questions and I see the fire is burning in their eyes,” Trump said. “I look at some of them and say, ‘Boy, how can you have so much hatred?’”
Trump then said Biden doesn’t have to deal with the same type of hostility from the press, or any press at all.
“He doesn’t take any questions from reporters,” Trump said. “Here I am getting bombs thrown at me every day by people that are totally, you know, frankly dishonest reporters. They’re espousing the view of the radical left, but here I am, [facing] bombs every day ... but this guy doesn’t come out of his basement and he hasn’t taken one question.”
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