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.”
LaRosa argued that the strategy never actually resulted in good press and badly backfired after the president’s disastrous June 27 debate against President Trump – which amplified Biden’s mental decline.
“I learned over the course of the next four years, and I learned a lot last summer just how bad their instincts actually are, and how their instincts really didn’t serve the president very well,” he said of Biden’s press team.
“Because no matter how hostile they were, or how punitive they were to the reporters covering Biden, his press coverage never improved. In fact, it only got worse,” LaRosa argued.
“It didn’t do the Biden White House any favors,” he continued. “The president’s reputation, his image, his trust, his approval numbers never got better. There was not any good waves of press that he received.”
“And part of that was because, you know, they burnt and just carpet bombed his relationships with members of the press who he cared about.”
