White House Reporters Audibly Shocked At Sight Of Joe Biden In White House Briefing Room

Reporters in the White House press briefing were audibly shocked when President Joe Biden entered the room Friday to take questions for the first time in his administration.

Biden paid a surprise visit to the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room to give remarks about the latest jobs report and take several questions for about 15 minutes. Reporters gasped when the president entered the room for the first time in his presidency alongside White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

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When Biden began his fourth year in office, he was averaging the lowest number of press conferences per year, 11, since former President Ronald Reagan, according to data compiled by the University of California at Santa Barbara’s American Presidency Project. As of Feb. 2024, Biden had participated in fewer interviews with media outlets than his predecessors, only doing 86 interviews since his inauguration in 2021, according to NBC News. (RELATED: Forget Basement Campaign — It’s Been A Whole Basement Presidency For Joe Biden)

The president appeared in the briefing room after an early morning report from Axios that the president has had no public events scheduled on 43 of the 75 days since he ended his 2024 campaign. Of the public events the president did participate in, only two were scheduled before 11 a.m., zero before 10 a.m. and five after 5 p.m., the Axios analysis shows. The president has also taken all calls and meetings with world leaders, except for one instance, between the hours of 11 a.m. and 5 p.m since leaving the race, Axios reported.

Our WH press corps has repeatedly
invited the president to visit the briefing room to take questions. Today he did so for the first as president. We hope he returns and that future presidents will connect with the American people this way as well. It’s an important tool of a… https://t.co/EPx61OpUOk

— Kelly O’Donnell (@KellyO) October 4, 2024

While in the briefing room, after taking questions mainly about the crisis in the Middle East, the president joked that he was jumping back into the presidential race.

“Do you want to reconsider dropping out of the race?” a reporter asked the president as he was leaving the briefing room.

“I’m back in,” he responded as reporters laughed.

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“Karine, can we do that again?” another reporter asked after the president left.

“No,” she said as reporters once again laughed.

Since dropping out of the presidential race and citing “unity” as his reason for doing so, the president has offered little additional clarification on why he decided to end his bid. Biden spoke to both ABC News and The View about his decision to drop out of the race, though the president told The View hosts he still thought he could beat former President Donald Trump if he were still running.

“There was a perception that perhaps your hand was forced, and some pointed fingers to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom you have a long relationship with and accomplished many things with. Did you feel that your hand was forced, and what is your relationship with Speaker Pelosi now?” Alyssa Farah Griffin asked Biden.

“Our relationship is fine. Look — I never fully believed the assertions that somehow there was this overwhelming reluctance of my running again. I didn’t sense that. And although the polling, they said Biden’s polling was different, the fact of the matter is, my polling was about, always within range of beating this guy,” the president said.

“What I did was … I think there were — it didn’t make sense. There were some folks who would like to see me step aside, so they had a chance to move on. I get that, that’s just human nature. But that wasn’t the reason I stepped down. I stepped down because I started thinking about it … you know, it’s hard to think, I know you’re only thirty,” the president continued, leaning over to Farah Griffin. “But it’s hard to think of, it’s hard for me to even say how old I am.”