On the eve of his first anniversary in office, President Biden on Wednesday held his first formal news conference in months, seeking to highlight his administration’s progress amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, a stalled legislative agenda in Congress and a showdown with Russia over Ukraine.
Biden also said that he expects Russian President Vladimir Putin to take some sort of action to “move in” and invade Ukraine and that the U.S. response “depends on what he does.” The White House later issued a statement seeking to clarify the comments, insisting that if Russian military moves across the border, it will be met with “a swift, severe, and united response from the United States and our allies.”
Shortly after the news conference in the White House’s East Room, Biden is all but certain to face a defeat in the Senate on advancing voting rights legislation.
Here’s what to know:
White House seeks to clarify Biden’s comments on Russia and Ukraine
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Less than an hour after Biden’s news conference ended, the White House issued a statement seeking to clarify what the president said about his expectation that Russia will invade Ukraine and the likely U.S. response.
“President Biden has been clear with the Russian President: If any Russian military forces move across the Ukrainian border, that’s a renewed invasion, and it will be met with a swift, severe, and united response from the United States and our Allies,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said. "President Biden also knows from long experience that the Russians have an extensive playbook of aggression short of military action, including cyberattacks and paramilitary tactics. And he affirmed today that those acts of Russian aggression will be met with a decisive, reciprocal, and united response.”
Questioned about Russian aggression during the news conference, Biden said he expects President Vladimir Putin to test the United States and NATO, adding that he will pay a serious price.
"My guess is he will move in. He has to do something,” Biden said.
Biden says he talked to McConnell the day of his voting rights speech
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Biden said he reached out to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) the day he made a speech promoting voting rights legislation earlier this month.
“I have no reluctance to reach out to any Republican,” Biden said. “I’ve now had the opportunity to travel because of funerals and eulogies … [and] congressmen and senators who come along with me, I don’t know the number, but somewhere between 20 and 25 senators and congresspersons have traveled with me … [I] ask them questions. They ask me questions. I learn a heck of a lot.”
“But as president,” he added, “you don’t quite have that ability to do that as often as I’d like to be able to do it.”
One of the things, he said, that has been made clear to him is that the public doesn’t want him to be the “president senator.”
“They want me to be the president, and let senators be senators,” he said. “And so … if I made a mistake, I’m used to negotiating to get things done. And I’ve been in the past relatively successful at it in the United States Senate, even as vice president. But I think that role as president is a different role.”
6:02 p.m.
Seung Min Kim: An array of topics was covered during Biden’s marathon news conference. But one issue that went untouched by reporters? Immigration, which dominated his first formal news conference last March. And it’s not as if there is a shortage of things to ask: For instance, does the president still believe that migrant families separated at the border under his predecessor deserve financial compensation? Now Justice Department lawyers are arguing in court that those cases should be dismissed, as my colleagues Sean Sullivan and Maria Sacchetti pointed out last week.
Seung Min Kim, White House reporter
6:00 p.m.
Dan Diamond: Asked about what covid-19 restrictions he expected a year from now, and whether Americans should expect a “new normal” for socializing and travel, Biden sidestepped the questions and instead reiterated his pandemic policy priorities.“I hope the new normal will be that we don’t … still have 30 some million people not vaccinated,” the president said, referencing his frustration over holdout Americans who say they won’t get the vaccines.Biden also touted a new Pfizer pill that appears to inhibit the worst effects of coronavirus and called on other countries to donate more shots to low-income nations, saying it was essential to curb the risk of new variants emerging. But he didn’t detail what Americans should expect for their own lives in the months to come.It’s not surprising that Biden doesn’t want to make commitments about what daily life will look like, as the nation continues to wrestle with soaring cases and hospitalizations from the omicron variant. To paraphrase public health experts like Harvard epidemiologist Bill Hanage, politicians who make promises in a pandemic often come to regret them.The White House has already faced questions about why they celebrated their progress in an event last Independence Day, with Biden vowing that covid-19 “no longer controls our lives,” before cases roared back in subsequent months.
Dan Diamond, National reporter investigating health politics and policy
5:53 p.m.
Tyler Pager: I’m struck by Biden’s focus on Republican obstructionism during his first year as president. He has lamented Republicans’ unwillingness to work with him, arguing the GOP has been more antagonistic during his presidency than they were in former president Barack Obama’s tenure. Yet 19 Senate Republicans joined Democrats in passing Biden’s infrastructure legislation, and Biden and Democrats have been eager to tout the legislation as a bipartisan achievement.
Tyler Pager, White House reporter
5:52 p.m.
Ashley Parker: Biden has been speaking for almost two hours, covering a range of topics. But if there’s one clear throughline, it’s that Biden and his team have settled on a message of Republicans not standing for anything or having any clear plans. Throughout the news conference, he returned time and time again to a version of something he asked rhetorically early on: “What are Republicans for? Name me one thing they’re for?”
Ashley Parker, White House Bureau Chief
Biden says Republicans ‘weren’t nearly as obstructionist’ during Obama administration
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Biden remembered Republicans not being “nearly as obstructionist" during the Obama administration "as they are now,” arguing that the two parties were able to “get some things done” during those years.
“We worked closely with John McCain,” Biden said, using the late Arizona Republican as an example of someone he was able to negotiate and collaborate with. “A number of Republicans we worked closely with even back in those days.”
“And so the difference here is who seems to [have] a desire to work,” Biden said, noting that he doesn’t know what the Republican agenda currently is.
“They had an agenda back in the administration when the eight years we were president and vice president,” Biden said. “But I don’t know what their agenda is now … What are they proposing to do about anything?”
The president’s statements did not address the fact that Republicans blocked former president Barack Obama from filling a Supreme Court seat, along with several other federal judicial seats, and that then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said his goal was making Obama a one-term president.
‘I don’t believe the polls,’ Biden says when asked about waning support among independents
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Recent public opinion polls have shown Biden’s popularity among independent voters has taken a sharp dip — a major factor in the president’s popularity rating sliding into the low 40s. But Biden on Wednesday suggested that he’s not worried about those numbers.
“How do you plan to win back moderates and independents who cast a ballot for you in 2020, but polls indicate are unhappy with the way you’re doing your job now?” a reporter asked at Biden’s news conference.
The president had a five-word answer.
“I don’t believe the polls,” Biden said.
Biden doesn’t entertain reporter questioning his mental fitness
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A reporter from the conservative outlet Newsmax questioned Biden about a poll claiming that some Americans don’t think the president is “mentally fit.”
“I’ll let you all make the judgment of whether they’re correct,” Biden said.
The reporter pressed the president on why he thinks segments of the U.S. electorate harbor such belief.
“I have no idea,” Biden replied, barely entertaining the reporter’s question before moving on to the next.
5:39 p.m.
Dan Diamond: U.S. covid-19 cases and hospitalizations are setting records this month, but Biden said the federal government’s pandemic plan is succeeding, part of his wide-ranging answer to a question about the competence of government.“I think we’ve done remarkably well,” the president said, as he extolled efforts to ramp up coronavirus tests, vaccines and other supplies, while occasionally nodding to setbacks. “Nobody has ever organized a strategic operation to get as many shots in arms.”This was a key part of Biden’s pitch as a candidate — that he would unleash the tremendous power of the federal government to combat a once-in-a-century pandemic, after President Donald Trump first played down the threat in 2020 and later shifted the burden to the states.The results of Biden’s plan have been mixed. For instance, he promised to set up a national government board that would help churn out coronavirus tests, saying it would resemble a World War II-era war production effort. That didn’t happen in 2021. But the vaccine effort has been widely credited as a success, and the White House’s new plans to ship masks and tests across the country have been hailed by public health experts, too.Dan Diamond, National reporter investigating health politics and policy
‘I’m not Bernie Sanders,’ Biden says when asked whether he’s pulling the country ‘to the left’
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Biden dismissed a reporter’s claim that he is pulling the country “far to the left,” noting that he, in fact, is not Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
“You guys have been trying to convince me that I am Bernie Sanders,” Biden added. “I’m not.”
He likes the senator, Biden said, but repeated that they don’t have the same politics.
“I’m not a socialist. I’m a mainstream Democrat,” Biden said.
Biden said he didn’t know what that reporter considers “too far to the left” but noted that if by that he meant securing money for coronavirus measures, for the bipartisan infrastructure deal and to provide for the American working class, he doesn’t know “how that is ‘left.’”
Biden says Harris will be his 2024 running mate and he’s satisfied with her work on voting rights
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Biden was asked whether he’s satisfied with Vice President Harris’s work on voting rights and if he commits to naming her as his running mate in 2024.
“Yes and yes,” the president simply replied.
When asked to elaborate, he said there was no need.
“She’s going to be my running mate, number one. And number two, I did put her in charge [of voting rights] and I think she’s doing a good job,” Biden said.
Biden says Russia and Putin will ‘be held accountable’ if they invade Ukraine
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Biden said sanctions by the U.S. and its allies are strong enough to dissuade Russian President Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine.
“He’s never seen sanctions like the ones I promised would be imposed if he moves,” Biden said. “What you’re going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades."
Biden also said the repercussions will “depend” on what Russia does.
“It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do, et cetera,” Biden said. “But if they actually do what they’re capable of doing ... it is going to be a disaster for Russia if they further degrade and, invade Ukraine.”
The U.S. allies, he said, "are ready to impose severe costs and significant harm on Russia and the Russian economy."
Earlier Wednesday, GOP senators urged Biden to take stronger action to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine. Their remarks came after a bipartisan delegation of senators traveled to Kyiv over the weekend to reassure Ukrainian leaders that the U.S. stood with them.
The president noted his conversations with Putin and said “he has no problem understanding me, nor me him.”
“I pointed out, ‘You’ve occupied before other countries, but the price has been extremely high,’” Biden recalled. “It’s real. It’s consequential. So this is not all just a cakewalk for the Russia military.”
“I think [Putin] still does not want any full-blown war," Biden said.
Biden says he has ‘no apologies’ for pulling troops out of Afghanistan
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Biden said that he had “no apologies” for pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan in August and that they would never have been able to unify the country.
“Raise your hand if you think anyone was going to be able to unify Afghanistan under one single government. It’s been the graveyard of empires for a solid reason,” he said. “It is not susceptible to unity.”
Biden said he wasn’t willing to continue pouring billions of dollars in military spending into Afghanistan. He noted that there was no easy way to pull troops out of the country after 20 years.
“I make no apologies for what I did,” Biden said. “I have a great concern for the women and men who were blown up on the line at the airport by a terrorist attack against them. But the military will acknowledge, and I think you will … that had we stayed and I did not pull those troops out, we would be asked to put somewhere between 20[,000] and 50,000 more troops back in.”
“Now, do I feel badly [about] what’s happening as a consequence of the incompetence of the Taliban? Yes, I do,” Biden said, but he added that he also feels bad “about a whole range of things around the world that we can’t solve.”
5:06 p.m.
Matt Viser: There has been a push and pull from Biden over unifying the country, or adopting a more partisan tone. The clearest signal of an emerging approach — forecast by White House advisers and his own remarks of late — is him gearing up for the midterms: “I tell my Republican friends, here I come. This is going to be about what are you for, what are you for?” In the past he prided himself on being a much-desired surrogate. The question this year, amid his low approval ratings, is whether Democratic candidates welcome him or distance themselves from him.
Matt Viser, White House reporter
5:00 p.m.
Dan Diamond: In recent weeks, the White House has really wanted Americans to know that the president is working to keep schools open amid the pandemic. It’s come across in media appearances, in tweets and at Wednesday’s news conference, where Biden said he wanted to “put in perspective” a question about why some schools are closing.“Very few schools are closing,” Biden said, leaning into the microphone for emphasis. “Over 95 percent are still open.”One reason for the White House’s sensitivity: Democrats took notice when Republican Glenn Youngkin won the governor’s office in nearby Virginia, after he campaigned on a message that school shutdowns over covid were a mistake. It’s a hot-button political issue that Biden doesn’t want to cede to the GOP ahead of the midterms.Another reason: Teachers and parents have increasingly complained that the White House’s promise to provide support and guidance to schools has fallen short. While Biden has overseen billions of dollars in covid aid to schools, there were few strings attached, and some schools haven’t spent the money on the tests and other protections that the White House expected. The Biden administration has renewed its efforts here, and last week promised it would send 10 million free tests to schools per month and take other steps to keep them open.But amid the omicron surge, there are teachers who are too sick to work and parents too worried to send their kids to school at all. So a few days ago, I asked Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus coordinator — does it really make sense to keep all schools open, as cases soar?“It’s so important for schools to be open for learning, for mental health for parents,” Zients countered, defending the White House strategy. “We have the tools and know how to do it.”Dan Diamond, National reporter investigating health politics and policy
4:59 p.m.
Sean Sullivan: “What’s Mitch for?” Biden asked about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “Everything’s a choice.” At the dawn of a midterm year, Biden was seeking throughout his remarks to draw attention to Republicans’ obstruction and cast a spotlight on the question of what they support. The challenge for Biden is that midterm elections have long tended to be a referendum on the party in power. And for now, Democrats control the White House and both chambers of Congress.
4:57 p.m.
Seung Min Kim: Regarding McConnell and what he stands for, reporters on Capitol Hill asked the Senate minority leader this afternoon about the GOP agenda. Though McConnell acknowledged that a question about the agenda is a “very good” one, he declined to answer, noting, “I’ll let you know when we take it back.” That dodge makes it clear that Republicans in neither the House nor the Senate are running on actual policy priorities in November but rather focusing on it squarely as a referendum over Biden’s presidency. But Democrats are sure to go after the GOP as having no agenda aside from attacking the president.Seung Min Kim, White House reporter
4:54 p.m.
Ashley Parker: One reason that Biden’s team has largely limited the number of news conferences and interviews he has done is because he’s often liable to go off script and say something that requires a bit of after-the-fact explanation or back-peddling. Today, it seems as if there are going to be A LOT of questions about what exactly he meant when he appeared to imply that a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine might be acceptable.Ashley Parker, White House Bureau Chief
4:53 p.m.
Sean Sullivan: “Very few schools are closing, over 95 percent are still open,” Biden said in a mock whisper, effectively arguing that the pandemic’s effect on school closures has been overstated in media reports. But some Democratic political strategists have worried that any interruptions to keeping kids in schools — including individual exposures and temporary remote learning setups — could be a powerful motivator in elections and spur people to vote for Republicans. Finding the right tone on how to talk about the issue could be key in upcoming battleground contests.4:49 p.m.
Jeff Stein: Biden on Wednesday touted the drop in child poverty during his first year in office, a positive development in his administration that is now extremely vulnerable because of a stalemate between the White House and Congress.Biden said child poverty last year fell by roughly 40 percent — which the president called the biggest drop in U.S. history — because of his administration’s child tax credit. Passed as part of the American Rescue Plan last March, the child tax credit expanded an existing benefit and extended it to millions of America’s poorest families.But that enhanced benefit — authorized by Congress for only one year — expired at the end of 2021, leaving millions of families in the lurch and potentially depriving Democrats of a key talking point. The White House has sought to extend it as part of its Build Back Better economic agenda but has been unable to pass that measure because of resistance from Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.). Manchin wants to impose new limitations on the Child Tax Credit, which would sharply limit its antipoverty impact.If the policy is not renewed, child poverty will spike in 2022 in Biden’s second year, just as it fell in his first.
Jeff Stein, White House economics reporter
4:47 p.m.
Ashley Parker: I was struck by Biden’s comment that he “did not anticipate that there’d be such a stalwart effort to make sure that the most important thing was that President Biden didn’t get anything done.” Having covered the first full year of his presidency, I absolutely believe he’s being sincere when he says this. But it feels like he should, in fact, have anticipated this; after all, he was Obama’s No. 2 when Republicans for eight years did the exact same thing to Obama.Ashley Parker, White House Bureau Chief
4:40 p.m.
Dan Diamond: In a speech expected to be dominated with talk of covid strategies and legislative priorities, Biden’s shout out on surprise medical bills was, well, a bit of a surprise.“We just made surprise medical bills illegal in this country,” Biden said near the beginning of his remarks on Wednesday. “Those [hospital] bills you get that you don't expect? … No more.”The president is correct: Health providers can no longer send big bills to insured patients when they get care from someone outside their network, under a ban that took effect on Jan. 1, 2022. And it’s a policy win that has gotten bipartisan support.But as The Post’s Rachel Roubein detailed this month, that win began with work under former president Donald Trump, with Congress outlawing the practice in December 2020. And there’s still a fair amount of work left, with industry groups trying to deep-six the new consumer practices in court, and many consumers not aware that the new rules even exist.Dan Diamond, National reporter investigating health politics and policy
4:31 p.m.
Dan Diamond: Biden acknowledged some criticism of the nation’s covid strategy.“I know there’s a lot of frustration and fatigue in this country, and we know why. Covid-19,” the president said in his remarks Wednesday, acknowledging setbacks in the White House’s strategy. “Should we have done more testing earlier? Yes. But we’re doing more now.”The president has been trying to thread a messaging needle on the pandemic. After campaigning on a plan to defeat covid, Biden is increasingly acknowledging that the virus is likely to be with us for the foreseeable future. And as covid cases and hospitalizations surged again this winter, Americans have soured on the White House’s efforts.About 49 percent of Americans said that Biden was doing a good job handling the covid outbreak, down from 67 percent who approved of his response last March, a period when the virus was receding, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll released this week.Some countries are trying to fight covid to a draw, but the president said he wouldn’t accept that. “Some people may call what’s happening now ‘the new normal,’ ” Biden said. “I call it a job not yet finished,” he said, touting the vaccines, tests and other tools “to save lives and keep businesses and schools open.”Dan Diamond, National reporter investigating health politics and policy
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