Whether it be Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show,” criticism from Fox News, or any other recent coverage of President Joe Biden, the White House and Biden campaign are growing frustrated over his portrayal in the media.
The focus on Biden’s mental lapses, verbal slips, and questions about his age have circulated headlines in recent weeks, which was all topped off with a scathing special counsel report that accused Biden of being unable to recall certain events, even his son Beau’s death.
However, Biden and his supporters are not taking the coverage kindly, as a few officials within the White House and his campaign are firing back at the claims made about the 81-year-old leader of the free world.
In an op-ed this week, Biden’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer, criticized how the report was covered, calling it “flawed coverage.”
In a recent interview, A. G. Sulzberger, the New York Times’s publisher, revealed that the White House is “extremely upset” about how Biden’s age has been reported.
In a letter to Kelly O’Donnell, the president of the White House Correspondents Association, Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House counsel’s office, criticized reporting on the special counsel’s findings despite the association having no control over what media outlets choose to cover.
“Your jobs are not easy. But they are important,” Sams wrote in a Feb. 13 letter. “When significant errors occur in coverage, such as essentially misstating the findings and conclusions of a federal investigation of the sitting President, it is critical that they be addressed.”
O’Donnell responded to the letter from Sams, calling it an “inappropriate” use of internal channels and “misdirected.”
But members of Biden’s teams haven’t stopped pushing back against the growing media narrative, as senior Biden campaign adviser TJ Ducklo called out the media for what he described as “gratuitous and sensationalist attacks on the President’s age.”
Ducklo went on to say that Americans deserve “a press corps who cover his candidacy, his comments, and his policy positions with the seriousness and ferocity this moment requires.”
Stewart, the comedian and recurring host on “The Daily Show,” fell under fire after he addressed the president’s age in a monologue that attacked both Biden and former President Donald Trump.
In his following appearance, he doubled down, saying that his jokes were merely observations of the president, which all Americans can see.