Secretary of State Antony Blinken expertly shut down Idaho Senator Jim Risch when he asked who in the White House has the power to "push the button" and shut off President Biden's mic. The exchange occurred during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where Risch insisted that someone had cut off the president's microphone during a press conference.
Risch asked:
"Look, we've all seen this; we saw it as recently as yesterday. Somebody in the White House has the authority to press the button and [...] cut off the president's speaking ability and sound. Who is that person?"
Blinken replied while appearing to try not to laugh:
"I think anyone who knows the President including members of this committee knows that he speaks very clearly and very deliberately for himself. No one else does."
Blinken elaborated:
"There is—there is no such person."
Again, the president speaks for himself. [He] makes all of his strategic decisions informed by the best advice he can get from the people around him."
View the exchange between Blinken and Risch below:
Outlets like Fox News have latched on to the idea that someone is censoring the President's speeches and run with it, reporting that someone in the White House is preventing him from speaking. They reported that someone had cut the feed during President Biden's briefing on wildfires in Boise, Idaho on Monday.
"This isn't the first time the White House intervened in blocking Biden from being heard by the general public."
Fox News maintained that someone was attempting to censor the president before he could deviate from what he was told to say.
CNN's Daniel Dale broke down what actually happened on Twitter.
Others chimed in with what's really behind the false Fox News reporting:
And slammed Risch for being essentially a right-wing troll.
Others were simply confused by why Risch chose to bring this up during this particular hearing, which was supposed to be about the United States' withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Quite the demonstration of how the poison of right-wing lies gets spread from bonkers conspiracy theory to Fox News feeding frenzy all the way up to being validated by a U.S. Senator.
@WhiteHouse/X
