RUTHFULLY YOURS

President-elect Joe Biden continued his campaign strategy of running from anything resembling a tough question from a reporter when attempting to leave the stage after another “press conference” on Tuesday, calling said reporter a “one-horse pony” while continuing to assert that his son, Hunter Biden, is the target of a smear campaign fueled by Russian misinformation.

The exchange occurred between Biden and Peter Doocy, a Fox News correspondent, after the president-elect took hard-hitting questions that included: 

“Do you believe that you will have a honeymoon to get things right?”

“Are you concerned about [Trump] lingering around? I see you smiling, but I still have to ask it. And kind of a corollary to that, would you consider filing for reelection early next year to show that you’re not going to be a lame duck?”

“Has the issue of the investigation of your son come up in discussions with your team and with potential candidates about the attorney general?”

You get the idea, in terms of tone and temperature. What was a hostile four years between the press and President Trump is now a hospitable period between the press and Biden. And, in a related story, the freewheeling press conferences of Trump randomly calling on anyone and everyone are gone, with Biden’s staff deciding who gets to ask questions and who gets boxed out indefinitely.

Doocy, along with Bo Erickson of CBS News, fall into the latter category, apparently, which forced Doocy on Tuesday to again yell a question at Biden as he quickly attempted to exit the stage.

“Mr. President-elect, do you still think that the stories from the fall about your son Hunter were Russian disinformation and smear campaign, like you said?” Doocy asked.

Now, this isn’t a gotcha or trick question. It takes no position on the matter either way. It’s what the late “Meet the Press” moderator Tim Russert used to employ in interviews every Sunday: “You said (X and Y). Do you stand by those remarks now, given what we know about (X and Y)?”

“Yes, yes, yes. God love you, man. You’re a one-horse pony. I tell you. Thank you. Thank you. I promise you, my Justice Department will be totally on its own in making its judgments about how they should proceed,” Biden responded while walking away, in an apparent reference to the more common phrase “one-trick pony.”

So, to unpack that answer, Biden still believes the Russians are responsible for the FBI opening up an investigation into his son well before capturing his party’s nomination. That’s obviously the stuff of conspiracy theories and deserves further discussion and inquiry.

But The New York Times didn’t touch the Russian disinformation exchange, despite its three-byline story on the press conference. The Washington Post didn’t broach it either. Nor did CBS, ABC, NBC or CNN. What is it about the Hunter Biden investigation that forces news organizations to run the other way?

As for the president-elect’s pledge that his attorney general will act independently from the executive branch, consider this: The first attorney general who served under the Obama-Biden administration was Eric Holder, who once referred to himself as “the president’s wingman” while still actively running the Department of Justice.

“I’m still enjoying what I’m doing, there’s still work to be done. I’m still the president’s wingman, so I’m there with my boy,” he said in a radio interview in 2013.

Yep — totally independent.

How about Loretta Lynch, Holder’s successor during the Obama-Biden administration? Her signature moment was meeting former President Clinton on an Arizona airport tarmac at the height of an FBI investigation into then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, in the midst of the presidential campaign, on June 27, 2016. Lynch, in the best punchline in a year of punchlines, said they just randomly happened to meet and discussed their grandchildren and golf. No word on whether beachfront property in Arizona was also broached.

“The attorney general of the United States of America is not the president’s lawyer,” Biden said. “I will appoint someone I expect to enforce the law as the law is written, not guided by me.”

An easy follow-up there would have been to broach Holder and/or Lynch. But Biden doesn’t get asked too many follow-up questions, in an effort to keep him in his safe space. That’s what keeps you from getting boxed out, after all.

Joe Concha is a media and politics columnist for The Hill and a Fox News Channel contributor.