Biden's Mixed Bag of Irish News and Controversy

President Biden ignored and laughed off press questions during a St. Patrick's Day meeting with Irish leader Leo Varadkar, despite major crises and mounting tension with the White House press corps over a recent dearth of meaningful access. Biden has given about half as many press conferences as his recent predecessors, and his informal question-and-answer sessions are often extremely brief engagements that can feature as little as a single-word reply before he walks away. The enduring non-transparent pre-screening of media is widely understood to be a way of shaping the variety of questions presented to the president.