Much ado was made about Donald Trump’s TV addiction when he was president, leading the nation by spending up to seven hours a day watching Fox News for positive feedback. By any means, his successor does not have such an all-consuming TV habit. But according to Axios, television news — and who is on it — is still quite important to the workings of the Biden administration.
Joe Biden really likes Morning Joe, the number-one morning show on cable. Axios reports that Biden likes it so much that his aides try to get booked between 7 and 7:40 a.m. so that they can get their points across on air in the hour that their boss usually watches the show. Biden even reportedly calls host Joe Scarborough to pick his brain on politics and complain about other TV coverage of his presidency. The show stays with him throughout the day: Aides say he will ask his staff if they saw a poll or a story that was on the program that morning. He will also consult with Morning Joe contributors like former Colin Powell adviser Richard Haass and Admiral James Stavridis. The report also states that Biden is a fan of Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN on Sundays — to the point that he will sometimes quote from the show at length.
Kamala Harris is also big on watching TV. Axios reports that the vice-president also pays attention to Morning Joe, but also tunes into Fox News’ The Five to get a taste of the negative coverage of her and the administration — though one former aide also told Axios that, “It got in her head and caused high anxiety because they were constantly hammering her.”
Why should the vice-president care about what former lad-mag editor and The Five co-host Greg Gutfeld has to say about her? Why, like Trump before him, does Biden pay more attention to his aides when they are on TV? Perhaps this is what we get when we elect people in the demo that cares about cable news.
