WASHINGTON, DC - Former President Joe Biden spent four years in the White House without granting an interview to The New York Times.
Biden finally relented and sprinted to the Times amid a growing controversy over the use of an autopen during his administration.
Fox News Digital reports that Biden’s interview with the Times appeared to raise more questions than answers.
And far from soothing those who questioned how much Biden actually knew during his administration, it appears to have done more harm than good.
For background, the Times lit into Biden in April 2024, slamming him for an “unprecedented” lack of availability to the media during his term in office.
Far removed from his constant media-whoring while serving first as a U.S. Senator and then Obama’s vice president, Biden was practically invisible during his term as president.
In that April 2024 statement, the Times said:
“For anyone that understands the role of the free press in a democracy, it should be troubling that President Biden has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term,” the Times said, then suggested that Biden was setting “a dangerous precedent” of avoiding scrutiny and accountability.
Also, last April, Politico published a story speaking about a “petty feud” between the Gray Lady and Biden’s team, with officials and campaign staffers calling NYT staffers “entitled.”
After four years of ducking pretty much all media, including the Times, Biden relented and conducted an interview that was published on July 13, ironically one year removed from the assassination attempt on President Trump.
In a “lengthy” ten-minute phone call, Times reporters spoke to Biden about the growing legal questions surrounding his use of autopens for presidential pardons.
That follows a March 6 report after the Oversight Project, affiliated with the conservative Heritage Foundation, analyzed a number of Biden documents and discovered that an overwhelming majority of documents signed during his administration used an autopen for his signature.
During the interview, Biden stated that he made the clemency decisions signed with the autopen and insisted that he “made every decision on his own.”
He referred to President Trump and other Republican critics as “liars,” the Times reported. The Times headline read:
“Biden Says He Made the Clemency Decisions That Were Recorded With Autopen.”
That headline seems to contrast with the Times’ own story, which at the 32nd paragraph says that Biden “did not individually approve each name for the categorical pardons that applied to large numbers of people,” citing Biden and former aides.
The Times also buried the lede in its story, where they wrote that Biden's chief of staff, Jeff Zients, sometimes gave final approval for use of the autopen while waiting until the final line to note that the only pardon or grant of clemency actually signed by Biden was the one for his son, Hunter Biden.
Critics noted that admitting Zients gave final approval for use of the autopen contradicted its own headline and the first few paragraphs.
In response to the Times interview, President Trump called Biden’s use of the autopen “one of the biggest scandals that we’ve had in 50 to 100 years…I guarantee you he knew nothing about what he was signing, I guarantee you.’
Trump said that while he uses the autopen for correspondence, it is “disgraceful” to use one for signing official documents such as pardons.
The White House has undertaken an investigation of Biden’s use of the autopen. Senior administration officials told Fox News Digital they are looking over thousands of documents turned over by the National Archives Records Administration (NARA).
White House officials told Fox that while the White House Counsel’s Office is leading the investigation, they are coordinating with the Justice Department.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pulled no punches when asked about the autopen by Fox News Digital.
“Joe Biden was the worst, most incompetent, and senile president in our country’s history,” Leavitt began. “It has been widely reported that Joe Biden handed the power of the presidency to an autopen controlled by unelected leftist staffers, who were allowed to make terrible decisions that destroyed our country.”
Last Tuesday, independent journalist Drew Holden took to X to slam the Times for “repeating Biden’s claim that he made the calls” while burying the admission that “he really didn’t.” He then slammed several other leftist media outlets, including ABC News, CBS News, USA Today, Rolling Stone, HuffPost, Yahoo News, and The Daily Beast, for parroting the Times’ narrative while deep-sixing reporting that Biden wasn’t the one always making decisions by himself.
Some sources said that Biden's decision to run to the Times to help fend off the autopen controversy should have been expected.
DePauw University journalism professor Jeffrey McCall said it made sense for Biden’s handlers to use the NYT to fend off criticism of Biden’s autopen use, noting that it is “the major agenda setter for the news sphere,” saying other media outlets would simply follow its lead, which Holden seemed to grab onto.
Tim Young, a media fellow for strategic communications at The Heritage Foundation, said that Biden speaking to the Times was intended as a convenient way to battle criticism.
“Biden finally sat down with the New York Times because his White House was exposed by the House GOP and the Oversight Project for literally not knowing what clemency or pardon orders were signed. It’s pretty clear the pressure was building on his former staff in what could have been an actual Constitutional Crisis–as the left likes to scream about a lot–and the team ‘rolled him out’ to get this over with before repercussions started to build,” Young told Fox News Digital.
Curtis Houck, managing editor at NewsBusters, told Fox News Digital that the Times piece was “embarrassing.”
At the same time, political commentator Mark Halperin stated that the Times failed to adhere to basic journalistic standards by omitting opposing opinions, including those from experts and Republicans, regarding Biden’s use of the autopen.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Times for comment, however, none was received by publication time.
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