President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming press secretary Karoline Leavitt vowed that the incoming administration will offer more press access than their predecessor.
It’s typically White House tradition for the sitting president to offer a year-end press conference. Yet when asked if President Biden planned to do one, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters this week she “didn’t have anything to share.”
“He’s been spending a lot of time in Delaware as he did throughout his entire term,” Leavitt told Dana Perino on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” Wednesday, concerning President Biden. “We haven’t seen or heard much from the leader of the free world over the past several weeks since the November 5 election. It’s clear that he realizes this is over for him. But I think it’s a dereliction of duty on his behalf. And he owes it to the American people to speak directly to them.”
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Karoline Leavitt will serve as President-elect Donald Trump’s White House press secretary. (Karoline Leavitt congressional campaign)
“But that’s not what we’ve seen from this White House over the past four years,” she continued. “Talk to reporters who sit inside that briefing room. They have been incredibly frustrated with the lack of access and transparency from the Biden White House. I can assure them of one thing: their access to the president and the transparency will increase when President Trump is back in the Oval Office. We saw that in his first term. He often brought the press into the Oval Office when he was signing bills. I can expect that is going to continue when he returns in January.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for comment.
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President Donald Trump hangs up a phone call with the leaders of Sudan and Israel, as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, left, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, and others applaud in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, Oct. 23, 2020. ((AP Photo/Alex Brandon))
The Biden administration has been criticized for a lack of transparency both at home and abroad. When the White House didn’t allow press access at the Quad Summit in September, when Biden spoke with leaders from Australia, India and Japan at his Wilmington, Delaware home, the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) called it “unacceptable.”
“My understanding is that the current posture of the administration is for the press to only see the leaders drive in with no eyes, or cameras on POTUS in this historic moment,” WHCA president and Politico correspondent Eugene Daniels said in a message to the White House at the time. “I can’t remember a time where this president has had a bilateral meeting on US soil and the press and therefore the American people were blocked from seeing it.”
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre speaks at a press briefing at the White House on June 18, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
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Again, Jean-Pierre was confronted about the White House’s decision.
“There’s going to be plenty of opportunities,” Jean-Pierre said. “It’s not like we’re not allowing all of you to see many other things that are going to develop throughout the day. I just went through them. A quick family photo. He’s going to take them to his high school. You all are going to be there. There’s going to be some really important announcement about cancer moonshot. You all are going to be there. There’s going to be an opportunity to see them when they leave on Saturday as well. You’ll see him saying goodbye to the leaders on Saturday. I hear you all, but can you also appreciate that we have created other opportunities?”
The WHCA also took issue with Biden snapping at a reporter for asking an off-topic question at the G-7 Summit in Italy in June.
“The White House Correspondents’ Association believes it is in the public interest to make clear that at a presidential press conference, at home or abroad, there are no preconditions regarding question topics,” the statement read. “While the White House does determine the number of reporters the president will recognize, it is up to professional journalists to decide what to ask.”
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When Leavitt assumes her role, the 27-year-old will be the youngest White House press secretary in history.
Fox News Digital’s Lindsay Kornick contributed to this report.
