Dear AP: Your Both Sides-ism is Showing
The Associated Press (AP), in its effort to assure us that it’s O.K., both sides do it, published this really stupid piece about Pres. Joe Biden and how he has spent three of his first eight weekends at (gasp!) his home in Delaware.
Trying to normalize the former guy and tell us that it’s not unusual because they all do it, the AP notes that Pres. Biden likes the White House well enough, but he’d rather spend his time at home. Especially on weekends.
You see, going home for the weekend is what presidents do. The former guy had Mar-a-Lago, Joe Biden has Wilmington, Delaware. No difference.
Pres. George W. Bush had his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Pres. Barack Obama hardly left Washington on weekends because his kids had stuff to do there.
Well, three out of four is not bad.
Oh, and Biden also spent a weekend at Camp David. So there’s that.
“Many presidents have complained at one point or another about feeling confined in the White House,” the AP tells us. “Biden already has echoed earlier presidents in comparing the experience to living in a “gilded cage.”
Apparently that wasn’t a problem for the former guy. He spent many, many weekends away from Washington D.C., either at his gold-plated resort in Florida or playing golf.
And then, the AP goes and talks to a political scientist who tells them that being at the White House is “confining,” so why wouldn’t the President want to go somewhere familiar and unwind.
Because living at the White House is apparently like camping in a leaky tent when it’s raining and there’s hungry bears in the woods. Very stressful and uncomfortable.
Plus, it’s hard to unwind in a house with 132 rooms.
Then the AP has to throw in this zinger: “The White House defends Biden’s leisure travel at a time when both he and federal health officials have been pleading with the public to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously, including by avoiding unnecessary travel.”
You see what they did there? Biden himself says it’s not safe to travel for “leisure” but he’s doing it. What a hypocrite.
But fear not, leave it to Jen Psaki, the Queen of All Media, to defend the President.
“The president lives in Wilmington. It’s his home. That’s where he’s lived for many, many years,” she noted. “And as you know, as any president of the United States does, he takes a private airplane called Air Force One to travel there.”
Yeah. Right back at you with your “gotcha” question puny media.
What do they think, Pres. Biden books a flight in coach on Delta Airlines to go to Delaware. Or maybe he’ll continue taking Amtrak home on weekends. How better to catch the Corona Virus and spread it to other innocent people.
The AP makes the point that presidential trips are expensive. Which is true. The President doesn’t travel alone and logistics and security cost some money.
The article tells us that the former guy spent $13.6 million of our money on four trips to Mar-a-Lago in early 2017. And that he used the more expensive “familiar” Air Force One. You know, the big one that was always in the background of the former guy’s TV appearances.
They really want us to know that not all presidential travel is the same. Probably because they wrote this: “But not all presidential travel is the same.”
There are actually two versions of Air Force One. There’s the 747-based one we associate with the president and a smaller, back-up version that is often used for shorter trips, and costs less to operate. Pres. Biden often uses that one, plus the Marine One helicopter for very short trips – like the ones to Delaware.
And, by the way, the AP notes, the former guy would fly to Florida for more than two hours and land at a commercial airport. Pres. Biden flies to Delaware for like a half hour and lands at an Air National Guard base.
Oh, and that political scientist makes sure we know that Press. Biden “…has cultivated his image as a ‘regular Joe…’” and “…has strong connections to his family, many of whom are in Delaware, that he wants to maintain.”
Just like the former guy.
Oh, wait.