Steven Crowder falsely claims Biden’s press conference was staged
Written by Jason Campbell
Published
On the April 5 edition of Louder with Crowder, host Steven Crowder falsely claimed that President Joe Biden’s March 25 press conference was staged because he used notes. Crowder, who remains temporarily suspended from YouTube, said pictures of Biden using notes during the press conference showed that he was taking prepackaged questions.
Citation From the April 5, 2021, edition of BlazeTV's Louder with Crowder
STEVEN CROWDER (HOST): Some new photos -- bring this up -- from The New York Post showed that Biden used cue cards during his first presser. And on one of there's -- yeah that one there has a list of names and pictures with circled numbers next to some reporters which -- we were talking about how weird it was live, but it gets even more subversive, I guess you would say. So in the presser, right, the first reporter asked a question. It looks a lot like the reporter marked number one on that sheet. So let me show you what that question was like and former Vice President Joe Biden's response.
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Remember, this happened while we were live. I was saying this live. We were all watching it live. There was a question about assault weapons, and that's when he started answering on infrastructure. And we said this is really weird, this is obviously something that was predetermined. Well, let's just go back. So now knowing what we know about these answers being written down -- that one cue card that you see, that you saw on that picture, is about infrastructure. Which was the answer that was completely out of left field. This is what we all said, what we agreed upon, live.
The New York Post first published photographs showing Biden with notes and a chart of reporters during the press conference. Since then, conservative media has been spreading unfounded allegations that the press conference was staged.
It is not unusual for a president to reference written notes during a press conference. President Donald Trump frequently attended press conferences with prepared notes, and the notes often had his own writing on them.
Crowder’s claim that the questions Biden received were “predetermined” is entirely without basis. Though it is not uncommon for the White House to find out what reporters may want to ask during a press conference before it occurs, that does not mean the questions are staged. And there is no evidence that Biden had answers to predetermined questions “written down,” as Crowder asserted, during the press conference. In fact, the reporters at the press conference received widespread criticism for not asking questions about the COVID-19 pandemic, which is the top priority for the Biden administration.