My First Disappointment with the Biden Administration
This was Joe Biden's message to his staffers on his first day in office. I loved it. To me, this was a very important part of what had been missing during the previous administration. Now, at that point, these were just words, but I was able to believe that Joe Biden meant them and would follow through, something I had not felt about politics in a long time. However, on that very same day, a situation would arise that would test this, and the Biden Administration in my eyes failed.
TJ Ducklo was a deputy press secretary and made some horrible comments to a female reporter who reached out to him for a story about his romantic relationship with another reporter. Vanity Fair covered this story, and Joe Biden's wonderful words setting a standard for conduct among his administration were not followed. Instead, Ducklo was suspended for one week.
The divergence of coverage from media outlets was interesting to look at. Fox News and other conservative pundits on twitter seemed almost happy about the story and the divergence from what President Biden had said on inauguration day. Which personally, felt pretty disingenuous following the past four years of silence on the poor interpersonal skills put on display of the Trump Administration, but that is not what is important here.
What is important, and what only furthered my disappointment, was some of the other, more left-leaning media's opinions put forth on this. CNN began with a fairly timid article a full day after the Vanity Fair story ran, simply covering the facts, reiterating what it was that Jen Psaki said when she addressed this during her press briefing that day. The problem was that the White House, at this time was framing the issue as a "heated conversation", which was then simply passed along by CNN.
This, in my opinion, is unacceptable. The only way to square this incident with the standards set forth by Joe Biden, was to fire Ducklo as soon as the facts of the situation were known. This is what CNN should have been calling for. This is what Fox should have been calling for. There should be no tone of joy from Fox, just as there should be no CNN personalities defending this by calling back to the Trump Administrations treatment of reporters.
Thankfully, Ducklo has resigned at this point, but in my mind some damage has already been done, and hopefully in the future the administration will learn to uphold the standards that they themselves put forth.
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