Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the preparations, personnel decisions and policy deliberations of Donald Trump’s transition. POLITICO Pro subscribers receive a version of this newsletter first. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Eli | Email Lauren | Email Lisa | Email Megan RIO DE JANEIRO — Since arriving in South America last week, President JOE BIDEN has gone before microphones to talk about the importance of international cooperation fighting climate change, the need to back Ukraine and the importance of stability in the China-U.S. relationship. But get him in front of reporters asking questions and he won’t say more than a word. He went to two international summits and said no more than one word — “peacefully” in response to a question about dealing with North Korea — to reporters, many of whom were itching to ask about DONALD TRUMP. Prior to the election, Biden was eager to talk about the existential threat that the president-elect posed to American democracy and the nightmarish future he said would follow if Trump ever returned to the Oval Office. But since Nov. 5, he’s had little to say on the subject.
Biden’s long-running reluctance to engage with the White House press corps became more pronounced this week as he’s ducked repeated questions from reporters itching to ask him about Trump’s return. During a six-day international trip, he answered just a single question from reporters.
It is starting to seem like he would just rather not confront uncomfortable questions about democracy or what he thinks of the president-elect’s promises to gut the Inflation Reduction Act, pull out of the Paris climate accord, end support for Ukraine and deport migrants. His aides also don’t seem eager to talk about Trump’s presence at the international summits and how world leaders are already moving on from the Biden presidency.
At the APEC summit in Peru last week, Biden did not respond when a reporter asked what he told his counterparts about the impending second Trump administration. He gave a tight-lipped smile when he was later asked his message to allies about his successor. During his visit on Sunday to the Amazon rainforest, he ignored pleas from the traveling press corps to talk. Even a handwritten sign, held up by the traveling TV producer as he boarded Air Force One, asking him to answer foreign policy questions on Ukraine and China’s XI JINPING — topics he is sometimes more keen on discussing — did not do the trick. When he landed Sunday evening in Rio de Janeiro for the annual G20 meeting, there was only one question left to ask. “Why are you hiding from the press, Sir?” an exasperated reporter shouted after him as he loaded into his motorcade. Although Biden has delivered a number of scripted remarks since the election — including a Rose Garden address 30 hours after the race was called for Trump, in which he reassured the country that “we’re going to be OK” — he’s declined to hold a post-election news conference, as Presidents BARACK OBAMA and GEORGE W. BUSH did when they were in office. He did not schedule a news conference after he met with Xi on the sidelines of APEC, as he did the previous two times he’s met in-person with the Chinese leader since he took office in 2021. And he left the G20 meeting and Rio without a press conference.
Biden has not responded to questions from reporters in a substantive way since the election. Asked as he was leaving church on Saturday, Nov. 9, if Trump was still a threat to democracy, Biden replied: “I’m going to see him on Wednesday.” When another reporter asked this past Saturday how the U.S. and China would address North Korea ahead of his meeting with Xi, Biden gave a one-word reply: “peacefully.” The White House has defended Biden’s lack of engagement. Senior deputy press secretary ANDREW BATES said in a statement that Biden “engages with the press extensively — including through over 630 Q&As in office and over 50 interviews this year.” On the flight to Peru, press secretary KARINE JEAN-PIERRE noted that Trump did not host a post-election news conference after he lost in 2020. She also said Biden “regularly takes questions from all of you, and he is going to continue to engage with the press. … Stay tuned. He will continue to do that.” But suggestions that he would interact with the press corps while in South America did not come to fruition.
The White House has instead offered up a smattering of administration officials to speak to the press corps throughout the president’s foreign trip, most of whom have only done so under the condition of anonymity and not on the record or on camera. Many of them have tried to downplay the role that Trump has played in the president’s conversations with foreign leaders.
After Biden’s meeting with the Japanese prime minister and South Korean president, a senior administration official, granted anonymity to speak about the discussion, said the “president-elect’s name did not come up.” Asked by another official if Trump was discussed in the president’s meeting with the Peruvian leader, the official said: “Not explicitly, no.” MESSAGE US — Are you JOE BIDEN? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
| 
