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Joe Biden made news on all kinds of subjects yesterday, a bracing reminder of what can happen when a president moves from scripted speeches and photo ops to taking journalistic questions.
And then there was the former guy, who got some things off his chest with his longest television interview since leaving office.
On “Good Morning America,” George Stephanopoulos repeatedly pressed Biden, including on some uncomfortable topics, and the president, notecards in hand, came prepared to generate some headlines.
The ABC sitdown convinced me that Biden has taken the wrong path in refusing to hold a news conference until a week from today. He was fine, he didn’t ramble on or commit a gaffe or accidentally trigger a nuclear confrontation. And even if he had (except for the last one), that’s a small price to pay for forcefully getting out your message.
Either Biden’s staff is being overly protective or the new president has misjudged the value of using interviews to shape the agenda. And by the way, it’s very easy for a president to finesse questions he doesn’t want to answer, as Biden on whether he’ll withdraw more troops from Afghanistan, or what price Vladimir Putin will pay for meddling in the 2020 election.
The president was clearly ready to throw Andrew Cuomo under the bus. He started with the safe Democratic position that if the sexual harassment allegations are proven true, the governor should resign. But then Biden, twice, raised an even grimmer specter: “It may very well be there could be a criminal prosecution.”
That was like a giant Bat signal sweeping across Gotham City. For the leader of the party, the president of the United States, to raise the prospect of Cuomo going to jail means more than all the Democrats’ combined calls for resignation. It cements the impression that Cuomo’s party wants him gone, even if only 35 percent of New Yorkers in a new poll agree.
And Biden may have had in mind a New York Times story on the governor and his aides trying to discredit the first accuser, Lindsey Boylan, in saying that women who come forward shouldn’t be “scapegoated” or “victimized.”
WHEN COMPASSION BACKFIRES: WHY BIDEN’S BORDER POLICY HAS MADE THINGS WORSE
The most important exchange was on the border, the first with the president since the migrant crisis spiraled out of control, given his lack of media engagement.
The ABC anchor asked the key question: “Was it a mistake not to anticipate this surge?”
Biden deflected by saying Trump had his own…
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