What's Going on Here: Biden Handlers Don't Let Press Into Trilateral Meeting Until After He Speaks

Joe Biden held a trilateral meeting on Thursday with both Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (whom he has been hosting for the last couple of days) and Philippine President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, Jr. The main talking points were concerns about China.

“The United States defense commitments to Japan and to the Philippines are ironclad. They’re ironclad," Biden said as he began three-way talks at the White House with Kishida and Marcos. "As I said before, any attack on Philippine aircraft, vessels or armed forces in the South China Sea would invoke our mutual defense treaty.”

That sounds nice until you realize that's the same thing he told Israel, and you look at how he's thrown them under the bus now.

REPORTER: How can Biden’s support for Israel be both “ironclad” and need to be “reassessed”?

KJP: "We’ve always been consistent there...we're going to continue to be very clear about that." pic.twitter.com/yqtPdOkyC7
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) April 11, 2024

Ironclad, reassessed -- hey, those mean the same thing, right? As noted earlier, the 20th century and 2024 apparently are the same things now too in the bizarre Biden administration where there appears to be a continual shifting reality.

The White House billed the first-ever trilateral summit with Japan and the Philippines as a potent response to China’s attempts at “intimidation” and sending a message that China is “the outlier in the neighborhood,” according to an administration official.

But one way of not having to clean up after Joe Biden -- but which makes Biden and his team look impotent -- is when they don't let the press hear what he has to say to begin with. In this case, handlers left the press standing downstairs in a hallway as Biden spoke.

DEMOCRACY DIES IN DARKNESS: Biden’s handlers didn’t let the press into his trilateral meeting “until AFTER” Biden was already done speaking. pic.twitter.com/uMejhUIcG8
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 11, 2024

The day’s print pool reporter, Michael Shear of the New York Times, relayed the unexpected dilemma in an emailed update to colleagues who were anticipating quotes from the summit of major US allies.
In an alert titled “Pool missed the pool spray,” Shear relayed the “bad news: The White House held most of the press in the lower hallway in the East Wing even as the pool spray at the Trilateral meeting got under way.”
Shear wrote to fellow members of the press corps that “[a]s a result your pooler and most of the American and Philippine reporters were not taken into the East Room until after [Biden] had concluded speaking.”

So how is the media supposed to convey this strong statement from the meeting when they didn't even hear what was said?

Fortunately, there was a C-Span videographer who took video, but Biden only spoke for a very short time.

They got shots like this instead -- Biden grinning as the press, who had just been let in, got tossed out again when he was asked but ignored a question about China.

Biden sits and stares — dazed and confused, as always — as his handlers forcibly remove the press from his meeting with the Japanese prime minister and the Philippine president. pic.twitter.com/06mNpPrNot
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 11, 2024