During a joint press conference at the G7 summit in Italy, Joe Biden had an instructive interaction with Bloomberg White House reporter Josh Wingrove. Wingrove dared to divert from the set course by asking Biden about the Gaza conflict, a line of questioning that clearly flustered Joe Biden.
After being specifically called upon by Joe, Wingrove shifted the focus to the situation in Gaza, pressing Biden for his views on Hamas’s response and the prospects for a peace agreement.
Biden holds a VERY RARE, highly scripted “press conference” — then scolds the press for asking him a question: “I wish you guys would play by the rules a little bit”
ATTACK ON THE FREE PRESS! DEMOCRACY DIES IN DARKNESS! DISGUSTING! pic.twitter.com/RX6RRA0h9S [1]
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 13, 2024 [2]
Biden, obviously irked by the deviation, promptly scolded Wingrove for not ‘playing by the rules.’
“I wish you guys would play by the rules a little bit… I’m here to talk about a critical situation in Ukraine. And you ask me another subject. I’ll be happy to answer in detail later. But the bottom line is that we made an agreement. I’ve laid out an approach that has been endorsed by the U.N. Security Council, by the G7, by the Israelis. And then the biggest hang-up so far is Hamas refusing to sign on even though they have submitted something similar. Whether or not it comes to fruition remains to be seen. We’re going to continue to push. I don’t have a final answer for you,”- Joe Biden