As we've previously documented, the Biden White House has employed a new strategy in recent weeks designed to make the way President Joe Biden shuffles when he walks across the South Lawn a little less noticeable to the public.

It's what I call "Operation Hide Joe Biden," and up until Thursday, the hiding consisted of his handlers swarming him as he either walked towards or away from Marine One, making it harder for him to be visible and in some instances effectively making it impossible to see him.

"Some Biden advisers have told Axios they're concerned that videos of Biden walking and shuffling alone — especially across the grass — have highlighted his age" and mobility challenges, Axios reported on Friday, while also mentioning that it was Biden himself who "suggested that they walk with him."

This strategy, as some of my RedState colleagues have also noted, has another benefit for Biden in that it also helps in shielding him from media scrutiny, which he gets so little of as it is.

READ MORE: Watch the Cover-Up by Handlers in Real Time as Joe Biden Shuffles From Marine One

But just shortly after the pathetic three-and-a-half-minute speech Biden gave earlier on the pro-Hamas campus encampments, "Operation Hide Joe Biden" took a troubling turn.

As OANN White House correspondent Monica Paige shared on her Twitter/X feed, his handlers actually had him board Marine One *before* they allowed the press corps through to see him:

UNREAL: President Biden was boarding Marine One before the White House staff even let the media/press through.

We were lined up outside, waiting to get through. When we finally went through, he was already boarding.

Nobody saw him leave until the last second.

Wow. pic.twitter.com/2e9wP7oPNP

— MONICA PAIGE✰OANN (@MonicaPaigeTV) May 2, 2024

So for those keeping score at home, the so-called leader of the free world delivered a short, scripted speech that disgustingly equivocated on one of the most pressing issues our country is facing right now with the pro-Hamas unrest. Then afterward, his staff ensured he'd get to take no follow-ups on it by squiring him off to Marine One ahead of his trip to Charlotte, North Carolina, before reporters could see him and question him.

This is not what leadership in a time of crisis looks like--like at all. And again, it's crazy that Team Biden thinks strategies like this are actually going to help him in the court of public opinion ahead of the November presidential election. 

The basement hideout strategy might have saved Biden's bacon in 2020, but 2024 is a whole different ball game altogether, with polls showing him in a continued free fall in key battleground states against Donald Trump. 

Simply put, if Joe Biden wants to turn the tide, he's got to get out more to convince voters that he deserves another four years. The problem is that it is Joe Biden who has to do the heavy lifting on that, not his handlers, and that is proving to be an increasingly tall task indeed, especially now that the toothpaste is out of the tube.

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