Republican strategist Scott Jennings fact-checked a CNN panel complaining about changes to the selection of the White House press pool members on Tuesday.
The White House announced that the White House Correspondents’ Association would no longer dictate the composition of the press pool on Tuesday. After “CNN NewsNight” host Abby Phillip and former Democratic National Committee Communications Director Xochitl Hinojosa complained about the change, comparing it to “the early days of Putin’s reign,” Jennings cut in.
“Okay, can we just address this dictator business? I‘m going to quote from some statistics —” Jennings said before former Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan of Georgia asked, “Which one, Zelenskyy?”
“Our old friend — our old friend Chris Cillizza, who calculated that in the first month of the Trump administration, the president took 1009 questions. Hardly dictatorial behavior. Same stat for Joe Biden: 141,” Jennings said. “And I would remind you all that in 2023, the Biden administration revoked the hard passes of 442 journalists. And at the time, the White House Correspondents Association took ‘a non-committal stance.’ So if you’re worried about transparency, Trump is being far more transparent than any recent administration.”
WATCH:
The Biden administration announced new rules for granting “hard passes” to media outlets in May 2023, with the crackdown costing 442 journalists their press passes. During his administration, Joe Biden held fewer press conferences than any president since Ronald Reagan.
A Wall Street Journal article published on Dec. 19 revealed that White House aides “insulated” Biden, even from Cabinet members, as his health declined, months after similar articles published by the outlet earlier in the year generated pushback from some media outlets.
Questions were also raised about the White House’s truthfulness about Biden’s health. On multiple occasions, Biden said he spoke with people who had died, including claiming to have spoken with former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017, and former French President Francois Mitterrand, who passed away in 1996, on two occasions in February.
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