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The White House has been roasted for promising President Joe Biden will give a “big boy press conference” as part of the three-day Nato summit of world leaders beginning Tuesday in Washington DC.
In Monday’s White House press briefing, John Kirby, the White House’s national security communications adviser, raised eyebrows with his choice of phrase – coming at a time when the embattled president is facing growing calls to quit the 2024 race.
“The president will hold a press conference… a big boy press conference we’re calling it,” he said, with a nod to Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who responded with a grin in the affirmative.
Kirby’s tongue-in-cheek reference was actually a callback to an exchange last week between Jean-Pierre and Bloomberg journalist Justin Sink, who had asked her about the White House’s alleged strategy of shielding the president from “impromptu” settings in light of his disastrous presidential debate performance.
The press secretary had denied that Biden had anything to hide regarding his competence for office and duly promised a “solo” press conference from the president, which prompted Sink to ask for more specifics: “Is that gonna be kind of the real, big boy press conference that we’re used to or…”
“Did you just say ‘big boy press conference’?” she responded, as fellow members of the press corps broke up laughing.
“Big Boy Justin over there… was asking some big boy questions,” Jean-Pierre joked.
A viral clip of Kirby using the phrase on Monday nevertheless prompted plenty of context-free ridicule.
Sky News host Gabriella Power observed that the use of such a phrase is “not making it any easier” for voters to take the administration seriously.
The network’s Danica De Giorgio then chimed in: “Will they take him to potty training next? I’m sure Doctor Jill will be on standby to help.”
The “potty training” quip sparked a flood of memes online, depicting the president on a jumbo packet of “Biden Big Boy” diapers or as the famous mascot of the Big Boy chain of fast-food restaurants.
Trump’s former press secretary Sean Spicer called the line “rather unbecoming”, Libs of TikTok asked if the administration “can get more embarrassing” while others failed to find any humour in it at all.
One right-wing journalist called the joke “pathetic” and complained that the White House spokespeople had been reduced to treating Biden “like a freaking toddler”.
Another was even more incensed by what was, ultimately, just a harmless moment of levity, fuming: “These people really sat down in a room together at the White House and said to themselves ‘you know what would really revamp the image of our dementia ridden boss? Telling the world that he’s giving a big boy press conference.’”
Elsewhere in Monday’s briefing, Kirby moved to dispel doubts about Biden’s acuity, saying his fellow Nato leaders were not concerned by the ongoing speculation about his fitness for office.
For his part, the president has continued to insist that he is going nowhere, saying as much at an Independence Day speech at the White House, in his Friday night reset interview on ABC News with George Stephanopoulos and on the campaign trail in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania over the weekend.
On Monday, he continued his defiant stance with a letter to congressional Democrats and again in a phone-in with MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
Nevertheless, six Democratic members of the House of Representatives have now publicly called for Biden to drop out while at least five more have voiced their concerns in private, their anxiety shared by both party donors and a significant proportion of the electorate, according to the post-debate polls.
