What an embarrassing display by the White House press corps. Over and over and over they asked the president about his comment that Putin should not remain in power. He said he was expressing his moral outrage and not signaling a policy change. His answer could not be clearer.
But they did not want an answer. They did not want to accept the story at its face value. They wanted a controversy. Somehow they seemed to feel that it was more important to badger @POTUS over nine words that expressed the view of every sentient moral being on the planet...
...than it was to focus on the tens of thousands of deaths caused by Putin. Somehow they felt that the story was how the president might have hurt the feelings of a war criminal rather than it being that we finally had a president who would call out Putin and stand up to him.
No president since Putin assumed power has taken a tougher stance. No president has mobilized a more active, unified response from NATO. No president in his right mind would feel any other way about Putin than Biden has expressed he does.
Further, the idea that somehow Putin would seize upon Biden's remarks as reason or excuse to escalate the war does not withstand the slightest scrutiny. His every action has been underpinned with lies and false rationales.
Further, it is Putin who is violently seeking regime change in Ukraine. (Contrary to what his lying mouthpieces may say.) And it was Putin who sought to effect regime change here in the United States--as our entirely intel and law enforcement community concluded.
Biden gave a historic speech in Warsaw. It marked a fundamental change in relations between the West and Russia. Today, moments before the torrent of ridiculous questions, the president announced he was supporting that change with a major new defense budget request.
How many questions were there about that? None. How many questions were there about POTUS's announced plans to introduce greater fairness into our tax system or more assistance for those in need? None. How many questions were there about current state of the war in Ukraine? None.
No. They were there for the game of gotcha. The result was they missed the big story of the president's trip, they missed the big story of the day, they missed the stories that mattered to American families, they missed actually learning more about Ukraine policy.
Instead, repeating the same question over and over and hoping for a different answer, they just did the work of the president's opponents and of Putin, seeking through some perverse alchemy to turn strong remarks and an effective policy into an error they could promote.
If there was any sensational story associated with the president's ad libbed expression of a hope we share with our allies and the people of Ukraine it is in how badly it was covered, how easily the press was once again led away from real news by the prospect of...
...winning a game of gotcha with the leader of the free world at a moment of great crisis when serious issues loom everywhere and far too many of the men and women of the White House press corps just don't seem to be interested in any of them.
p.s. I was just looking at some of the response here. Some were just disparaging the media generally and were pretty rude about it. Some of the people I respect and admire most are members of the DC and WH press corps. They perform an absolutely essential service.
Many do it extraordinarily well. I was speaking primarily about today's display and what I saw this weekend following the speech. There was too much of a herd instinct...and that happens often when groups are bunched together, travel together, etc.
So, can the WH press corps do better? Absolutely. Are some of its members brilliant, honest, hard-working and essential to the functioning of our society? Yes, many are. Best if we don't succumb to groupthink when criticizing the groupthink of others.
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