Former president Donald Trump made himself available to the press almost every day, but President Joe Biden‘s regime has removed the most basic communication and transparency measures.
The White House does not post the schedules for the president and vice president online, and they often call a “lid”—an end to public appearances—before lunch time, Politico reported.
The White House has removed citizen petitions—potentially violating the First Amendment’s “right to petition government for a redress of grievances.”
The White House also shut down its public comment phone line and the comment section on its YouTube page, which sees little traffic and overwhelming disapproval.
Biden has not held a press conference, though he lets White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki speak to the state-approved media, whose reporters do not dare ask useful or penetrating questions.
The White House said it will release in-person visitor logs but will not name the people who Zoom into virtual meetings. This means that the names of most people the president and vice president meet with will not be disclosed.
“They need to keep ‘showing their work’ by opening Cabinet meetings, disclosing information and using political capital to emphasize that being ‘open by default’ isn’t just an option but an obligation across the government,” Alex Howard, director of the Digital Democracy Project at the Demand Progress Educational Fund.
Transparency advocates say that the Biden regime must answer public information requests more promptly, publish opinions from the Office of Legal Counsel, classify fewer documents, and reveal whom the president and vice president are meeting.
The development should come as little surprise after Biden, 78, was widely criticized for running the majority of his presidential campaign from the basement of his Delaware home.
Although the campaign used coronavirus as its pretense for locking him away, political insiders hinted that the true intention was to keep the flub-prone candidate from shooting himself in the foot.
The current lack of transparency invites further speculation, although some media reports already have questioned whether Biden, facing credible concerns of dementia, is actually running the show.
During his first month in office, Biden spent much of his time signing more than 50 executive actions, acknowledging at one point in a candid remark, “I don’t know what I’m signing.”
During the opening of a coronavirus vaccination facility in Houston last week, Biden mispronounced the name of longtime congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, referring to her as Shirley Jackson Lee before audibly asking “What am I doing here?” according to the White House transcript.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
