Politics

White House cuts livestream after President Biden reportedly went off script during meeting 

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An official White House livestream of President Biden was abruptly cut off mid-sentence after he went off topic during a meeting about wildfire preparedness with officials on Monday.

The President was attending the meeting at the National Interagency Fire Centre in Boise, Idaho, aimed at the ongoing wildfires that plague several of the country’s western states. The President seemed to remain focused for most of the meeting but stopped to asked George Geissler of the National Association of State Foresters a question. Biden starts the question, “One of the things that I’ve been working on with some others is – ”, at this stage both the audio and video coverage is abruptly cut without any warning. At this point the livestream was replaced by a message which said, “THANK YOU FOR JOINING”.

A similar incident occurred last month, when President Biden’s audio feed was cut off just moments before he responded to a question from a journalist about his administration’s military withdrawal from Afghanistan.  NBC’s Peter Alexander had asked the President, “If Americans are still in Afghanistan after the deadline what will you do?” Biden simply smirks and then his audio is cut. However, Alexander later tweeted that he heard Biden answer “You’ll be the first person I call”, this was later backed up by additional reporters.

Something similar happened again back in March when Biden was speaking to Democratic lawmakers at a virtual event. The White House once again appeared to cut Biden’s feed just after he said he was “happy to take questions”. One recent article on Politico event noted that White House staffers seem to either “mute {Biden} or turn off his remarks” out of “anxiety” that he will go off script and embarrass either himself or the administration.

President Biden has told reporters on several occasions that aides had told him to stick to his prepared remarks. During one coronavirus press conference in May he told reports “I’m not supposed to be answering all these questions.” White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, admitted that during a podcast interview that President Biden was often advised by her staff to avoid taking questions from the press.

ARTICLE: NATHAN REID

MANAGING EDITOR: CARSON CHOATE
PHOTO CREDITS: SKY NEWS

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