President Joe Biden vowed to lead an administration that emphasized "transparency," but he refused to commit to permitting reporters and photographers to fully document the surging border "situation" that he blames on former President Donald Trump.
"I will commit when my plan very shortly is under way to let you have access, to not just them, but other facilities as well," Biden told reporters in the East Room when asked about media cameras being restricted from migrant children facilities. "I will commit to transparency and as soon as I'm in a position to implement what we're doing right now."
Biden said he hasn't personally stopped at the borde because he did not want to become the story. Meanwhile, he pointed a finger at the Trump administration's policies for creating the current surge of migrants at the border that's marked the first 65 days of Biden's first term.
"One of the reasons I haven't gone down, all my chief folks have come down, I don't want to become the issue, you know, bringing all the Secret Service and everybody with me, to get in the way," he said Thursday during his first presidential news conference.
Biden did say, eventually, there will be more transparency of the border influx, which his administration has refused to call a "crisis."
"So this is being set up, and you'll have full access to everything once we get this thing moving," he said.
When pressed how soon that might be, Biden declined to answer.
"I don't know, to be clear," he said.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.