Biden REFUSES to answer questions yet again during meeting with a world leader
Biden again REFUSES to answer questions during meeting with a world leader: Sends Spanish PM to White House driveway to answer questions alone, just hours after Title 42 is lifted
- Both leaders refused to enter the Oval Office
- The Spanish Prime Minister then addressed the media outside the White House
- Biden answered questions earlier this week, but did not hold a ‘press conference’ on Friday
A world leader answered questions from reporters at the White House on Friday. But it wasn’t President Joe Biden, and all his answers were in Spanish.
Biden sat with the Prime Minister of Spain at the White House on Friday morning but declined to answer reporters’ questions in the wake of the end of Title 42 and other hot topics — but his counterpart held his own outdoor event with reporters.
Nor leader took questions after making brief statements to reporters at the start of an Oval Office meeting. Instead, Biden smiled amid a barrage of questions from reporters.
After their meeting, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez answered questions outside the west wing of the White House in his native language. He spoke in a place where legislators, cabinet officials and other guests sometimes speak after visits to the White House.
Biden sometimes submits to “two-and-two” questioning along with a world leader when a key ally comes to Washington, though, as the White House has noted, it’s done on an ad hoc basis.
President Joe Biden met with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Friday. Neither took questions during a brief availability — but Sanchez answered questions from reporters for the White House
The president answered multiple questions after an event earlier in the week — after confusing reporters by referring to a “press conference” that never took place the week before.
Reporters questioned Biden’s stand-in, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, on Friday about why Biden would not answer formal questions just hours after Title 42’s authority ended, following several consecutive days of contacts with more than 10,000 migrants at the border.
“Why not let the president talk about Title 42 and the expectations people should have there? she was asked.
“So the president has answered more than 40 questions this week alone,” she replied sternly. “No, no — but he’s answered your questions twice this week and answered many of the many questions about Title 42. He answered all the questions you asked.’
“And I think this is an opportunity for the American people to hear directly from him a week ago today,” she said, referring to a sit-down that aired Friday night on MSNBC.
Tiense preguntas? The Spanish prime minister answered questions from reporters at the White House. He was the only leader to do so, but he spoke in his native language
Sanchez spoke about trade, economic cooperation and negotiations to clean up a 1966 disaster off the coast of Spain
Biden himself had earlier this past Friday referred to that event as a “press conference,” forcing the White House to clarify that it was, in fact, a sit-down with a single reporter on a network deemed friendly.
“So the American people have heard of the president,” she said.
With no formal press event scheduled, Sanchez walked out of the West Wing to address a bank of U.S. and Hispanic media.
In Spanish, he said “clear progress” has been made in negotiations on the ongoing clean-up of the 1966 incident in which the B-52 crashed into another aircraft while refueling and lost 4 hydrogen bombs off the Spanish coast. He said the leaders instructed engineering teams to negotiate the removal of contaminated soil.
He also said a trade dispute over black olives was “still a point of friction”.
Instead of a press conference, an official White House reading said leaders “underlined our unwavering support for Ukraine in the face of Russia’s relentless war,” and noted an agreement on defense cooperation between the US and Spain .
The leaders “decided to deepen economic cooperation in America” and “discussed ways to broaden the scope of our cooperation.”
They also discussed climate goals, infrastructure, science, space, and “advanced their teams to negotiate an agreement regarding further clean-up efforts at the site of a 1966 plane crash in Palomares, Spain.” The Spanish Prime Minister had telegraphed that he would raise the matter in advance.
Biden remains under pressure to hold more “formal” press conferences, and his media interactions this week came as former President Donald Trump sat in front of a town hall on CNN for nearly an hour.
That event drew criticism from within the network for allowing Trump to make baseless claims about the 2020 election and go after E. Jean Carroll, even after a Manhattan jury found him liable for sexual assault and libel.