President Biden will hold his first press conference as president a week from Thursday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced.
Biden has waited longer than his predecessors to hold a formal news conference and take questions from reporters. The White House said earlier this month that he would hold a press conference by the end of March.
“President Biden will hold a formal press conference on the afternoon of Thursday, March 25th,” Psaki said in a statement on Monday.
A week from Thursday will mark Biden’s 65th day in office.
The move is likely to allay critics and members of the press who had clamored for Biden to hold a formal media availability and take questions from reporters.
The White House defended the president’s decision to wait longer to hold a formal news conference by noting that he has taken questions at the end of events and asserting that he has been busy addressing the coronavirus pandemic.
“This president came in during a historic crisis, a pandemic like the country had not seen in decades and decades and an economic downturn that left tens of millions of people out of work, so I think the American people would certainly understand if his focus and his energy and his attention has been on ensuring we secure enough vaccines for all Americans … and then pushing for a rescue plan,” Psaki told reporters at a news briefing earlier this month.
The news conference will come two weeks after Biden signed his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan into law.
Biden is traveling to Pennsylvania and Georgia to highlight provisions of the relief bill this week and will appear on ABC’s “Good Morning America” for an interview Wednesday morning.