(Headline USA) New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd accused the White House this week of pressuring her to edit a recent gaffe by President Joe Biden.
In a column on Sunday headlined, “Joe Biden, in the Goodest Bunker Ever,” Dowd detailed an exchange between herself and the Biden campaign after she cited a comment Biden made to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos last week.
Stephanopolous had asked Biden how he would feel if he stayed in the race and former President Donald Trump won November’s election.
“As long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about,” Biden replied.
In its transcript of the interview, ABC News changed Biden’s quote to read, “I did the good as job as I know I can do.”
Dowd, however, used the original quote in her column following Biden’s ABC interview. After it published, Dowd revealed she received an email from T.J. Ducklo, a Biden campaign spokesman, who asked her to “tweak” the quote from Biden to make her reporting “consistent with the corrected transcript” from ABC.
Dowd acknowledged that “goodest isn’t a word,” but said she and her researcher listened to footage of Biden making the comment with “our ears up against the computer, 10 times, and that’s what it sounded like.”
Dowd told Ducklo she’d discuss the correction request with her editor, to which Ducklo reportedly responded, “Yeah again, it’s not what I think. It’s what ABC News, who conducted the interview, thinks. I think it would be quite unusual if the Times asserted the president said something that the news organization who conducted the interview says he didn’t say.”
Dowd said she then asked Ducklo if ABC updated its transcript at the behest of the White House.
“ABC News, like any news organization, makes their own independent editorial decisions,” he claimed. “Surely you are not suggesting otherwise.”
Dowd went on to blast Biden’s team, arguing her exchange with Ducklo is a “harbinger of tense times between a White House in bunker mode and a press corps in ferret mode. … Maybe the White House should think about closed captioning,” she added.
While the Biden debate scandal has left a black mark both on Democratic operatives and the complicit mainstream media that kowtowed to their demands (in stark contrast to the treatment of the prior Trump administration), the use of Ducklo to hector journalists is particularly egregious.
He was previously forced off Biden’s White House communications staff for similar conduct after making “abhorrent and disrespectful” comments to a female Politico reporter including threatening to “destroy” her.
His bullying tactics, early in Biden’s administration, marked the only known instance of Biden holding staff accountable under the high ethical standards he outlined at the beginning of his term.
However, the rehiring of Ducklo suggests that even the low bar that his White House has adhered to may have sunk even lower with his campaign staff.
