Nearing the end of his term, President Biden lamented during an interview posted on Thursday that the media landscape had changed drastically — and specifically called out “billionaires” who purchased major newspapers.
When asked by MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas why there was no positive news about the Biden economy circulating in the media, and if there was too much of a focus on “horse race” politics, the president said that technology was changing the process for “everything.”
“Technology is changing everything,” Biden said. “I think you guys are extremely successful because you speak to what is the truth, and you say this is what I think the facts are, and you lay it out, and you speak to it. But it’s hard, there are very few editors anymore, very few editors saying you can’t write that,” Biden said.
He also shared, “You have billionaires buying standard newspapers that are well known and saying we’re not going to do that anymore, because I don’t want to do it.”
Biden said it would take a while for it to “sort out.”
Biden appeared to be referring to the decisions by recent prominent billionaire newspaper owners to eschew endorsements in the 2024 race between President-elect Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
The president was not asked about Harris’ loss to Trump, his decision to drop out of the race or his controversial pardon of his son, Hunter Biden, during the friendly interview.
Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos decided to end the paper’s tradition of endorsing a presidential candidate ahead of the election. The editorial board had already written the endorsement for Harris, as was expected from the liberal paper, before Bezos quashed it.
This move outraged liberals at The Washington Post as they previously had endorsed both Hillary Clinton and Biden over Trump and lambasted him as the worst president in modern history.
Billionaire Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong also prevented his liberal editorial board from endorsing Harris this election cycle, angering staffers and prompting resignations.
During the rare interview, Biden said that “generically” he did not have any regrets about his presidency, when pressed on whether he would have done something differently in the last four years.