Michael LaRosa, the former press secretary for First Lady Jill Biden, explained to The Young Turks’ Cenk Uygur how the Biden administration bullied “a lot of journalists” in a newly released interview.
LaRosa made waves last month when he told an audience that the Biden campaign was guilty of “gaslighting” the public over then-President Joe Biden’s age and political standing last year. And he doubled down during his conversation with Uygur.
The ex-staffer said that the Biden team acted like it was operating “out of a bunker” from the moment its principal took the oath of office in 2021, which he professed not to understand because there was “so much goodwill” toward it from the press.
“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,” said LaRosa.
“How do you bully the press?” asked Uygur. “What do you threaten?”
“Well, there are a lot of ways. I mean, like 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. So you talk to a reporter, but like one person decides what the reporter can use, what quotes they can use. There was weird things like that,” replied LaRosa.
He continued:
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. 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.”
And they said, “Well, that’s what the other side tells us to do for him [Joe Biden].” I said, “That’s okay, fine. That’s their problem.” You know, 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 him 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. 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.
“Yeah, it’s amazing to me that no one in the press complained about it,” mused Uygur. “So-”
“Well, you know, I kind of always wondered that myself. Like why didn’t any of these reporters even in New Hampshire, and some of these small town papers or local news, LIKE why didn’t anybody ever say anything? I thought it was so weird at the time,” interjected LaRosa. “But it was my first presidential campaign. I’m thinking, ‘Okay, maybe these people know better than I do.’ But no, it was just, I learned over the course of the next four years, andI learned a lot last summer just how bad their instincts actually are, and how their instincts really didn’t serve the president very well. 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.”
The post Jill Biden’s Ex-Press Secretary Explains How Biden White House Bullied ‘A Lot of Journalists’: They Demanded Pre-Screened Questions and ‘Quote Approval’ first appeared on Mediaite.
