Rep. Jake Ellzey questioned whether a cue card with talking points that President Biden used involved collusion with the media and suggested that other people are “calling the shots.”
A photo showed that Biden held a note card during a news briefing Monday. The card included prepared responses to a question asking what the president meant when he said earlier that Russian President Vladimir Putin couldn’t remain in power.
“The question I have is, were those questions that he had on the note card planted by somebody else and then referred to by the media?” Ellzey, a Texas Republican, said during an interview with Fox News. “That would show collusion with the media.”
Biden has previously relied on prepared lists of reporters when taking questions from the media. He’s said he was given a list, but it’s unclear who crafted it.
“I think he has a team that he relies on more than I would if I were the president,” Ellzey told Fox News. “I think that there are some people calling the shots that we don’t know who they are, and they need to be briefing us on what they’re advising the president on what he should be doing.”
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The president has previously made remarks that have led critics to question if someone is giving Biden orders. In September, for example, he said he was “supposed to stop and walk out of the room” after he finished prepared remarks.
Biden said Saturday that Putin “cannot remain in power.” He made the impromptu comment during a speech in Poland during which he called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “strategic failure.”
Ellzey noted that politicians regularly rely on note cards to stay on message.
“Especially at the presidential level, every word that he says is going to be scrutinized, gone over by every world leader, because it has impact,” Ellzey told Fox News. “He went off message, and it got him in trouble.”
This is an excerpt from Fox News.
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