Fox Business Network anchor Stuart Varney theorized on Wednesday morning that President Joe Biden will use a teleprompter capable of generating “set responses” to real-time questions asked by reporters at next week’s press conference.
After the White House announced that Biden would hold his first formal presidential press conference on March 25, Fox has seamlessly shifted gears from complaining about the lack of pressers to knocking the president for seemingly giving himself nine days to prepare for questions.
During a discussion with Fox News contributor Joe Concha on Varney and Co., Varney wondered aloud about the terms and conditions of the press conference before suggesting that the White House will game the system to help Biden.
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“What kind of press conference will it be?” Varney asked Concha. “Will he have a teleprompter? Will he know the questions in advance? Will he call on friendly reporters only? What do you think it’s going to look like?”
While Concha said he didn’t think there’d be a teleprompter, he went on to speculate that Biden may not call on reporters himself and instead rely on staffers—suggesting that the questions will be pre-determined.
“Even with the low expectations going into this for Joe Biden, as it always is with this president as far as speaking outside of a teleprompter, this will not go well if reporters ask solid, tough questions with follow-ups,” Concha added.
Varney, meanwhile, fell back to his conspiratorial belief that the White House will provide Biden with a device that will give him real-time answers to reporters’ questions during a nationally televised press conference.
“I do believe there’ll be a teleprompter which you can just turn on when you need a set response,” the pro-Trump Fox host exclaimed, prompting Concha to merely react: “Interesting!”
Varney, who did not provide any sources or basis for his theory, then concluded: “That would not surprise me at all! They gotta protect the man. That’s what they’re there for.”
This is far from the first time that conservatives and right-wing media have baselessly suggested that Biden was using teleprompters or other devices to feed him answers and responses.
Last July, for example, then-President Donald Trump and his allies peddled a false claim that Biden used a teleprompter to display pre-written questions and answers during a presser. Months later, Fox News lent credence to the Trump campaign’s smear that Biden was using a hidden earpiece during the first presidential debate.
