Name: Joe Biden's First Press Conference Dominated By Immigration Questions
Brand: esquire.com
SKU: esquire-com-354
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

Joe Biden's First Press Conference Dominated By Immigration Questions

preview

If Joe Biden knows anything, it's that you've got to underpromise and overdeliver. At a press conference Thursday, from the original 100-million-in-100-days goal to 200 million in the same timeframe. But that news seemed to take a backseat to the idea of the press conference itself, the spectacle of it, after weeks of countdown clocks and generalized agita about his unwillingness to hold a proper presser. To be clear, he should hold them regularly. It's part of the job. But with all the buildup, the White House press corps fell into exactly the trap Biden has sought to avoid in his brief tenure. They set up some big expectations. After all the talk about democracy and accountability, the questions had to be good.In some instances, they were. It was useful to learn that, while Biden does not think we will get our troops out of Afghanistan along the current May 1 timeframe, . It would be nice to know more, but we'll take it. There was little focus on the new expectations around the vaccine rollout, however, or the pressing question for many Americans of when they will get vaccinated, largely because there were simply no questions about the pandemic. None. There was one on China and another on North Korea, fair enough. There were a few on the filibuster and the prospect Republicans will not cooperate with Biden whatsoever, all kosher. But most of all, there were questions about immigration.About a week and a half ago, the situation at the southern border suddenly was declared a Crisis in the national media. It's a massive problem, , as it has been going back through the Trump and Obama administrations and longer. But a report this week found there are not an especially large number of people trying to cross the border right now compared to this point in previous years. in that respect. According to , the idea there is a particular crisis right now may have originated with an appearance by Santa Monica Gargamel Stephen Miller on the Fox News Channel last week, which is no way for anything to start. If we accept the idea that the border situation is dangerous and untenable—a crisis—it's important to think about in what way. Who is at risk and why? The governor of Texas his constituents are going to get COVID-19 from Hondurans seeking asylum in this country. (In another context, we might call them "refugees.") This is not real, much like the rhetoric from Biden's predecessor casting immigrants as disproportionately violent criminals. The people most in danger are those trekking 1,000 miles through unforgiving terrain to get here, particularly the kids.It's harsh to pick on one question, because there were so many immigration questions at this press briefing. They seemed to make up at least 40 percent of the discussion. But ABC's Cecilia Vega, just back from a visit to the border, asked one that revealed the strange calculus of the Washington press. She started out with the story of a nine-year-old boy whose mother said she sent him north from Honduras "because she believes you are not deporting unaccompanied minors like her son." She echoed a suggestion from PBS's Yamiche Alcindor earlier in the presser that Biden's basic humanity when compared to his predecessor may be drawing more people to seek asylum.This content is imported from twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.Biden: "The idea that I'm gonna say, which I would never do, that if an accompanied child ends up at the border we're just gonna let him starve to death and stay on the other side -- no previous administration did that either, except Trump. I'm not gonna do it." — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) Even if we accept this anecdotal example as representative of larger trends, and grant the notion that Biden's policy change around allowing unaccompanied migrants to get an asylum hearing——outweighs other factors in migrants' decision-making, this is a strange formulation. The question, essentially, is whether Biden's basic humanity—the fact he is not a complete nihilistic sicko like his predecessor—is bad. Is it weak? Does it allow the U.S. to be taken advantage of? You might recognize all of this as right-wing rhetoric, because it is. The assumption it rests on, that significantly reduced the number of people arriving at the southern border, is not proven. It's ideology.And there's the issue. The press should ride the Biden administration hard, but we've all got to think about whose interests we're supposed to be representing in this business. Is it people who otherwise would have no voice in how this country is governed? Or is it the opposition party? Because it's hard to see who stands to benefit from asking Biden if he's treating refugees too humanely other than his hardliner opponents. Is it in the interests of the people of the United States? Are their lives materially affected by Biden's decision to allow children to get an asylum hearing before they're deported? All these questions take on an added flavor if you allow yourself to grapple with —Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador—to the point that they are failing states from which people feel they have no choice but to flee.And then there's the other issue of whether we needed a plurality of the questions here to focus on immigration. Certainly it merited discussion, but this much? This does not reflect the most pressing concerns of everyday American citizens. It reflects the priorities of people who have been consuming a lot of news—particularly television news—for the past week and a half. It is the job of the White House press, and the political media more generally, to better align our own concerns day-to-day with those of people who are voiceless in this democracy. Holding the president accountable has got to be about more than ferrying his political opponents' talking points into the room, because to immigration. , they are not about whether he's being too humane.Jack Holmes is a senior staff writer at Esquire, where he covers politics and sports. He also hosts Useful Context, a video series.This content is imported from OpenWeb. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.&nbsp;Advertisement - Continue Reading BelowAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below

If Joe Biden knows anything, it's that you've got to underpromise and overdeliver. At a press conference Thursday, from the original 100-million-in-100-days goal to 200 million in the same timeframe. But that news seemed to take a backseat to the idea of the press conference itself, the spectacle of it, after weeks of countdown clocks and generalized agita about his unwillingness to hold a proper presser. To be clear, he should hold them regularly. It's part of the job. But with all the buildup, the White House press corps fell into exactly the trap Biden has sought to avoid in his brief...

Joe Biden's First Press Conference Dominated By Immigration Questions

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS