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Here’s the deal: “Sleepy Joe” didn’t doze during his first presidential press conference, an event much-hyped by the press.
America’s oldest president even made a bit of news when he announced the doubling of the vaccination goal to 200M and threw his hat into the ring for the 2024 presidential race.
President Biden dished a bit of levity to the socially distanced crowd of reporters when asked, why he hadn’t set up a re-election campaign, as his predecessor had by this time.
“My predecessor needed to, needed to,” said a laughing Biden. “My predecessor. Oh God, I miss him.”
The president then chided the press for trying to stir things up by focusing on a caged-steel wrestling rematch with Donald Trump.
He said: “Oh, come on. I don’t even think about—I don’t—I have no idea. I have no idea if there will be a Republican Party. Do you? I know you don’t have to answer my question, but, I mean, you know, do you?”
Savvy politician that he is, Biden put aside the Trump nonsense and returned to his focus on “working to get things done for the people I care most about, which are hardworking, decent American people who are getting—really having it stuck to them.”
“Sleepy Joe” wants to be known as “Steady Joe.”
That is his ticket to triumph in 2024. So far, so good.
President Biden may not miss Trump but my friends at The Intercept, the vital online investigative news outlet, surely do.
In a March 26 fund-raising pitch, The Intercept noted that it is not immune to the financial crisis faced by the journalism industry in the post-Trumpian era.
Here is the pithy pitch:
“Now, after four years of hair-on-fire crisis under Trump, traffic on news websites is declining across the board, and cable news ratings have fallen by as much as one-third.
“Nonprofit news organizations like The Intercept are facing their own unique challenge, as the same cultural trends driving down ratings are also causing a decline in donations.”
Though the need for investigative journalism has grown in importance as more and more newsrooms shrink, new donations to The Intercept are down 50 percent since Trump left office.
More from the pitch: "The daily dumpster fire spectacle of Trump’s White House has ended, but Trump didn’t invent systemic racism or government corruption, and we must continue to root out abuses and hold the powerful to account.’"
Reporter Glenn Greenwald, documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras and investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill launched The Intercept in 2014.
Their goal was to hold the powerful accountable through fearless, adversarial journalism with a focus on surveillance, war, corruption, the environment, technology, criminal justice, and the media.
These should be heady, not tough, times for The Intercept.
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