Vice President Joe Biden has not been heard from in a major television interview in five months – prompting one Republican to liken him to Bernie from the 1989 comedy film “Weekend at Bernie’s.”
Biden’s last national TV interview – on NBC's “Meet the Press” – was held on Sunday, May 6,
The Weekly Standard reports.
In the interview, Biden backed gay marriage before President Barack Obama publicly changed his position. In an interview with ABC days later, the president expressed his support for gay marriage.
On the print side, the vice president has only conducted one interview since Mitt Romney named Paul Ryan to the Republican presidential ticket in August, The Standard reports.
“From all we can find, Joe Biden has done one interview since Paul Ryan joined the ticket August 11. One,” a Romney campaign aide told The Standard. “And it was with John Heilemann for New York magazine.
“Over that period, Paul Ryan has done 197 interviews, 153 of those on TV (29 National and 124 local or regional),” the aide added. “The rest print or radio.
Obama, however, has held numerous interviews over the period, including visiting TV’s “The View” during a session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
But one Republican source explained Biden’s absence from the press this way, according to The Standard:
“Joe Biden gets used by the Obama campaign like Bernie from ‘Weekend at Bernie's.’ They drag him out to a battleground state, prop him up on a podium in front of a teleprompter, pose him for photos with locals, and then quickly roll him back to Air Force 2 before reporters have a chance to ask him questions.
“They want Biden to be seen, but not heard in any interviews because they're afraid he might embarrass the president with another one of his hilarious gaffes," the source told The Standard.
In “Weekend at Bernie’s,” two young executives were forced to create the illusion that their deceased boss, Bernie Lomax, was alive to avoid being killed themselves.
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