Earlier this year, footage of President Joe Biden was circulated throughout conservative circles on social media. The clip showed the commander-in-chief leaving a press conference after only answering a handful of questions when the press clearly wanted more answers. Some believe the clip from October was further evidence of Biden keeping himself somewhat distanced from the press, a commonly held criticism of the president.
The video shows Biden standing at the White House press briefing room podium, looking at Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, stating, “I’ve gotta go, kid.” KJP responded, “I know, I know,” before Biden continued, “I said I’d take a couple of questions,” indicating his allotted time to interact with the press had elapsed.
For context, the October 4 press conference revolved around President Biden sharing highlights on the economy as Democrats scrambled to change the pervasive negative sentiment ahead of the election. “Hey, look, folks, good afternoon. The past two days have gotten some — we’ve gotten very good news about the American economy,” Biden said, according to transcripts from the White House.
Addressing the port strike, which posed a major challenge ahead of the election, Biden continued, “Just yesterday, shipping carriers, after some discussion, and the International Longshoreman’s Union came to an agreement to keep their ports in the East Coast and Gulf ports open. We averted what could have become a major crisis for the country. And a tentative agreement, which includes record wage increases for dockworkers and shows the importance of collective bargaining and represents, I think, critical progress toward a strong contract.”
“I especially want to thank the carriers, the port operators, and the longshoreman’s union for reaching this agreement at a time when the nation has experienced such terrible devastation from Hurricane Helene. It was truly a service to the American people for all the parties to come together and to respond to our request to keep the ports open,” he added, before acknowledging the possible consequences of the strike. “I was determined to — to avert a crisis at this moment, because it’s a critical moment. If we didn’t do this now, we’d have a real problem.”
However, Biden also touted the misleading narrative that he had “created” 16 million jobs in his term, a claim that fact-checkers have disputed since the vast majority of those gains were from businesses reopening after the pandemic. “Unemployment is back down 4- — to 4.1 percent. And every month f- — that Vice President Harris and I have been in office, we’ve been — there’s been — we’ve created jobs every single month. The nation has now created 16 million jobs since I’ve come to office, more jobs created in a single presidential term than at any time in American history,” he said.
Concluding, Biden said, “The simple fact is we’ve gone from an economy in crisis to literally having the strongest economy in the world. And — but we got — we — we got more work to do. We’ve got more work to do to deal the — the things I’ve just mentioned. And we’re going to have to deal with unforeseen costs of what this — this hu- — this hurricane is going to cost. It’s going to cost a lot of money, and I’m going to probably have to ask the Congress before we leave for more money to deal with some of those problems, but that remains to be seen.”
"*" indicates required fields
Watch Biden and KJP below:
Note: The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.