President Joe Biden’s weeks-long fight for his political life continued at Thursday’s much-hyped NATO summit press conference, but it was not the media blockbuster which was advertised.
Rather than face a ravenous press corps demanding he prove his competence, he danced between a pre-selected list of journalists who inquired about both his competency as a candidate and the foreign policy issues the summit was ostensibly about.
The nearly hour-long conference with the press-shy president was promoted by his aides as a final litmus test for his flailing candidacy, even dubbed the “big boy” press conference by a spokesman on Monday. It also served as another platform for the president’s defiance, as he repeated his refusal to withdraw from the presidential race. How successful he was remains to be seen; more Democratic policymakers called for him to exit the race after it ended.
