In the aftermath of a mass shooting, swirling questions about the origins of the coronavirus, and a disconcerting rise in anti-Semitic attacks on the streets, the media refuse to give President Joe Biden even a moment away from their prying inquiries.
As the president emerged from Cleveland’s Honey Hut Ice Cream on Thursday, a reporter called out the question burning through the nation’s collective consciousness: “Mr. President, what did you order?”
“Chocolate chocolate-chip,” Biden replied, holding his waffle cone aloft like a scepter of old.
Gas prices are at a 7-year high, Jews are being beaten by Biden voters, murders are up 800% in Portland, and MSM is focused on POTUS’ ice cream flavor. pic.twitter.com/3dDkXHnWnu
— Razor (@hale_razor) May 27, 2021
Reporters responded with enthusiastic chants of, “Oooh! Aaaah!”
When another reporter attempted to inject real issues into the stop, inviting Biden to respond to “Republicans who are prepared to block the Jan. 6 commission,” the president responded, “Eat some chocolate chocolate-chip.”
The reporters got in spirit, as CBS News White House reporter Kathryn Watson tweeted the 16 flavors available at the custard stand, adding, “I’m craving a couple scoops of sea salt caramel.”
So much journalisming https://t.co/yxI15iKrax
— The Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) May 27, 2021
Biden’s sweets-stand message discipline drew adoring smiles and doting coverage on MSNBC, rather than questions about his grasp of the underlying issues, intellectual flexibility, or mental presence in the moment.
MSNBC’s Ali Velshi ran a three-minute-long segment on the fact that “Joe Biden really, really loves ice cream.”
Here's a 3-minute MSNBC segment on Joe Biden eating ice cream pic.twitter.com/4bk5PK8CBo
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 28, 2021
Velshi’s puff piece came five years after CNN ran a segment titled “Joe Biden really, really likes ice cream.”
Thursday’s ice cream feeding frenzy was only one of several media softballs the White House press pool served up to the president or his officers this week.
The president likes Gatorade and cookies
On Monday, The Washington Post ran an investigative piece seeking to blow the lid off the president’s daily schedule titled “Weightlifting, Gatorade, birthday calls: Inside Biden’s day.”
The author wrote that she probed seven White House insiders, “most speaking on the condition of anonymity,” before she revealed treasured secrets like the fact that Biden regularly indulges in his “favorite treats, from orange Gatorade to chocolate chip cookies.”
The food obsession continued, as Ashley Parker — a regular MSNBC contributor — wrote:
Biden’s preferred lunch is a soup and a salad — usually a chopped salad with grilled chicken — and he is partial to orange Gatorade and Coke Zero. Offsetting the low-calorie diet, he has a well-known penchant for sweets, including chocolate chip ice cream.
Biden also carries around a bag with peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, stocks an office with saltwater taffy, and lets visitors snag chocolate chip cookies “enclosed in a wrapper with a gold White House seal.”
The piece was so feckless that the reliably leftist “comedian” Stephen Colbert ridiculed the “explosive, behind-the-curtains look” at the Biden administration.
“So, what has the ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’ paper dug up on Joseph R. Biden?” he asked. “The biggest story of the year: This president likes salad, in what many are calling Watercress-gate.”
Does he have a Peloton bike?
Also on May 24, a reporter asked White House spokesperson Jen Psaki:
What more can you tell us about the president’s health regime [sic]? We hear he’s lifting weights. What sort of weights is he lifting? Does he have a personal trainer? And what happened to his Peloton bike — did he bring it to the White House?
Psaki, who often has her questions screened in advance, said, “I didn’t know where this was going.” She added merely, “I can tell you, having traveled with him a fair amount, sometimes he’s hard to keep up with.”
She stopped just short of claiming that Biden regularly swims several miles in the Yangtze River, at a record-breaking pace (which is probably better, given Biden’s swimming habits).
What discerning viewers should know: Each of these tiny moments of journalistic malpractice share the same subtext: They are nothing more than image management for the Biden-Harris administration. Questions about Joe Biden’s sweet tooth make the president seem personally adorable, while questions about his physical fitness make him seem robust. Neither deal with the president’s mental faculties, the substance of his budget-busting proposals, or the disastrous outcome of his policies in the U.S. or around the world.
Compare this to the Trump administration, where each question attempted to present Donald Trump as a Diet Coke-swilling, morbidly obese, racist imbecile reviled by people in his own administration.
The media’s treatment of President Biden gives new meaning to the term “soft-serve.” The people who are not well-served by the media’s uncompensated PR campaign are American viewers, subscribers, and voters.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.