The day after Joe Biden’s town hall on CNN last week, Politico, no friend of the Republicans, ran a critique titled “The top moments from CNN’s kid-gloves town hall with Biden.” Here is the opening paragraph:
For the second time this week, a presidential candidate fielded questions from voters in a town hall setting. But if ABC’s event with President Donald Trump was an icy grilling, CNN’s drive-in conversation with Joe Biden Thursday was more like an affable reunion of old acquaintances.
Since he first emerged from his basement bunker last month, the media have been handling the 77-year-old Democratic candidate is if he were a piece of Dresden china. They haven’t broached the subject of his frequent “lids,” political lingo used by White House press secretaries to indicate there will be no news coming out of the White House that day. Nor have they written scathing criticisms of his refusal to take questions at the end of his press conferences, which are still rare.
On Monday, Biden finally provided a first glimpse at how he intends to handle “real” questions. Namely, he doesn’t. When asked whether he will go along with the calls of his fellow Democrats to pack the Supreme Court. Biden responded, “Let me tell you why I’m not going to answer that question,” before going on, ironically, to attack Donald Trump for always changing the subject.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
It happened again yesterday. This time the topic was much closer to home. Following the release of a Senate report on newly uncovered nefarious dealings with Ukraine and China involving his son Hunter, Biden was asked how his role as vice president in charge of Ukraine policy and his son’s receipt of millions of dollars there did not represent a conflict of interest. Losing his composure, Biden huffily denied there was any conflict of interest. “I’m not gonna— I’m not gonna respond to that,” he snapped. “Let’s focus on the problem.”
And what is the problem? Poking a finger at his questioner, the now scowling Biden added, “Focus on this man — what he’s doing that no president has ever done!”
Joe seems a little rattled by this line of questioning.
pic.twitter.com/70cBmo7Xra— ጋልḲE̳ (@Ja1Ke3) September 23, 2020
Focus on this man? Is that going to be Biden’s fallback answer whenever the going gets rough during the debates? It should be interesting to watch.
