President Biden’s recent weekend in Delaware, meant to be a routine trip to his home state, encountered a number of curious logistical challenges that kept the traveling press pool away from the President of the United States in an almost unprecedented manner.
The protective press pool lost contact with the President not once but twice this weekend, with administration staff glibly remarking upon a series of “hiccups” that prevented reporters from confirming Biden’s whereabouts or activities.
POLITICO reports: “It’s rare for the pool to lose touch with the commander-in-chief at all. One veteran White House reporter who is frequently part of the traveling press corps estimated that they had witnessed it fewer than five times in nearly a decade.”
White House Correspondents’ Association president Kelly O’Donnell added: “The proximity of the protective pool is an essential part of the transparency needed in coverage… The pool always knows where the president is in public, and the president always has immediate access to communicate directly to the American people through the pool. Any disruption of that continuity is an issue that we seek to immediately address.”
“We don’t want hiccups to happen. But things don’t always move as smoothly as we would like,” said White House director of press advance Nicolette Jaworski, who worked as a public relations consultant for corporate giant AT&T until February this year.
Read the details of the bizarre incidents here.
