Ex-Biden WH staffer rips ‘unethical’ former president’s team for approving quotes, scripting questions: ‘They did bully a lot of journalists’
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Former President Joe Biden’s White House staff made “really unethical” demands of the press as part of a campaign to “bully” journalists into portraying the aging commander in chief in a good light, a former staffer revealed Tuesday.
“They did bully a lot of journalists, and I think they would tell you that now. They wouldn’t have told you at the time,” Michael LaRosa, who served as former first lady Jill Biden’s press secretary, told “The Young Turks” host Cenk Uygur.
The former president’s communications team, led by Anita Dunn , was “very hostile and very suspicious” of journalists and treated their jobs as if they were operating “out of a bunker,” LaRosa said.
“I never understood it because there was so much goodwill that [Biden] had with the media, had with the press, coming off of Donald Trump,” he added.
When pressed by Uygur to explain how the press was bullied under Biden, LaRosa revealed that “unethical” demands were made of journalists going back to the president’s 2020 White House campaign.
“I thought it was weird that they only did interviews for ‘quote approval.’ There was this thing in Biden world about quote approval, everything had to be on quote approval,” LaRosa said, explaining that the practice involved “one person” on Biden’s team deciding “what the reporter can use, what quotes they can use” after an interview with the president.
LaRosa also claimed that young Biden press staffers were “dog trained” to force reporters to ask certain questions and divulge their questions ahead of interviews.
“I mean you saw them get caught trying to script questions to radio reporters that summer, summer of 2024. It was very reminiscent to me of being on the campaign in 2020, where these young press staffers in these states like New Hampshire, or Iowa, or Nevada, they were sort of like dog trained to make the questions conditional for interviews,” he said.
“And I said to them, ‘Please never ask the journalist for the questions ahead of time. You can always ask about the topics, but do not ask them for the questions for Dr. Biden,’” LaRosa explained, claiming that he refused to take part in the practice when handling press for the former first lady.
“My job was to protect my boss and they could handle their, we called it the boys side, the boys team could do their thing with regard to prepping [Joe Biden] for interviews. But I did not want – I knew from being a former producer at NBC, having long relationships in the press, that was just like 101,” LaRosa said. “It was really unethical to be doing that, but these young kids are really taught to make that a part of their sort of pre-pre-screening for interviews.”
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Just imagine if Trump would only do interviews if he approved the questions in advance and had the right to pick out which responses were published. The cries of "fascism" would be deafening.
With Biden safely committed to the dustbin of history, the democratic media is now approaching the "now it can be told" era when they now report the stories they should have been reporting for the last 5 years. None of this is surprising to those who pay attention to non-state media. I just wonder how the people who spent five years shilling about how "with it" biden was and defending his hiding from actual press oversight feel about revelations like this. they were played for suckers. Does it bother them, I wonder?
Wait for the books come out and much of what we suspected will come out as being true.
If this were a former Trump staffer all we'd hear from conservatives is that they must be lying because they hate Trump now. Personally, I do believe this former staffer, the problem is, Biden is already out and all this is just an attempt to deflect and distract from the monumental incompetence happening right now in the Whitehouse.
Personally, I do believe this former staffer, the problem is, Biden is already out
yes, that’s how the Democrats have operated for decades.
lie. Keep lying in the face of overwhelming evidence. Then, when they’ve lied long enough that the news cycle has moved on, claim “who cares? It’s time to move on.”
First, nothing in this seed nor this former staffer is accusing Democrats of lying, they are claims of bullying and accusations of unethical behavior which the Trump administration is being accused of right now as well and they're not even hiding it, they're straight out just banning media like the AP to punish those who they think won't print nice things about them.
Second, it has nothing to do with a "news cycle" moving on, it's that Biden is no longer in office so who the fuck cares about what Jill Bidens' press secretary felt about the former administration's relationship with the media.
One thing is clear, any conservative bitching about this while defending the incompetence of the Trump administration proves themselves massive, monumental dishonest hypocrites.