President Biden holds first formal news conference, faces questions about pandemic, border surge, and more

President Joe Biden held his first formal news conference Thursday, where he faced questions about the ongoing pandemic, the migrant surge, and more.

President Biden, who was giving a press conference to 30 socially distanced reporters in the East Room of the White House, began by announcing he has set a goal of 200 million vaccine doses by the end of his first 100 days in office after beating his original goal of 100 on day 58 of his Presidency. He also boasted the benefits of his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief plan and how he is helping the economy recover. Afterwards, he was questioned about the migrant surge at the Southern border and the Republican opposition to his political agenda on immigration, gun control, and voting rights.

“I think my Republican colleagues are going to have to determine whether or not we want to work together or decide that the way in which they want to proceed is to — is to just decide to divide the country, continue the politics of division, but I’m not going to do that. I’m just going to move forward and take these things as they come,” said Biden. Then Biden started to talk about child migrant facilities and called them ‘totally unacceptable’.

In response to a reporter asking about the very poor conditions that the migrant children have to live in, Biden said, “That’s why we’re going to be moving a thousand of those kids out quickly. That’s why I got Fort Bliss opened up. That’s why I’ve been working from the moment this started to happen to try to find additional access for children to be able to safely, not just children, but particularly children, to be able to safely be housed while we follow through on the rest of what’s happening.”

Biden, when asked about when we would propose his promised gun control bill, said to “stay tuned,” and that his next priority was infrastructure. President Biden also talked about filibusters. Biden suggested he may go further than going back to the “talking filibuster” because it may help his policies get through a deadlocked Senate. “If we have to, if there’s complete lockdown and chaos as a consequence of the filibuster, then we’ll have to go beyond what I’m talking about,” the President said.

Another topic that the President talked about was foreign policy. Biden views North Korea as his top foreign policy issue and said that it will be difficult to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by May 1st, “The answer is that it’s going to be hard to meet the May 1 deadline, just in terms of tactical reasons, it’s hard to get those troops out.” President Biden was asked if he will run for reelection in 2024. “My plan is to run for reelection, that’s my expectation,” he responded. He also said that Kamala Harris would be his Vice President choice again.

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ARTICLE: JACOB ZUBY

POLITICS EDITOR: CARSON CHOATE

PHOTO CREDITS: THE NEW YORK TIMES