What’s up (with Biden’s) Doc?

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Ever since JOE BIDEN came down with Covid, press secretary KARINE JEAN-PIERRE and Covid response coordinator ASHISH JHA have struggled to answer one basic question: Why has the president’s personal doctor, KEVIN O’CONNOR, not personally been briefing reporters?

O’Connor has not been seen in public over the past week, despite tending to the world’s most powerful man as he deals with contracting the virus. Instead, he simply writes short daily letters that update the public on Biden’s condition, which the White House puts out.

Publicly, Jha and Jean-Pierre say there’s nothing unusual about the arrangement even though it’s been de rigueur for the president’s physician to brief the press on certain occasions for decades. Behind the scenes, White House and administration officials say that it’s part of a communications strategy to focus attention away from the 79-year-old president being sick and toward the administration’s larger pandemic response. Plus, they argue that a briefing by the physician isn’t necessary when the president’s symptoms are mild.

Video: W.H. takes questions on absence of Biden’s physician at press briefings

But that’s only part of the story.

Another reason is that O’Connor, while beloved by the president who affectionately calls him “Doc,” is not always the most disciplined of messengers, according to former Biden aides and other people familiar.

“He tells a joke a minute, and a funny one every four minutes,” said one former Biden aide who likes O’Connor and finds the trait endearing.

As proof, in an interview earlier this year with the Federation of State Medical Boards, O’Connor quipped: “I joined a cult – I’m a Pelotonian.” It was a reference to the exercise bike the president also has been known to ride. Was this one of the 25 percent of his funny lines? You decide.

Biden himself recalled an awkward case of O’Connor’s bedside manner in his memoir, “Promise Me, Dad.” When the family learned that BEAU may have an aggressive form of brain cancer called glioblastoma, JILL BIDEN asked O’Connor what the best medical facility to go to would be. “[O’Connor] blurted out, without thinking — because he would not allow himself to believe it could be the worst — ‘If it’s The Monster, it doesn’t matter where we go,’” Biden wrote. He added: “Jill burst into tears.”

The president also wrote of O’Connor’s bluntness in another section when Biden didn’t want to cancel a trip to South America in early 2015, even though he was sick. Biden recalls O’Connor saying: “I know this is important, sir, but you have pneumonia. And right now, you look like shit. I can’t make you not look like shit.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the White House declined to make O’Connor available for an interview. A White House official said that “the only reason Dr. O’Connor has not been in the briefing room is because, thankfully, the President started with mild symptoms and they have almost completely resolved, to the extent that he is now exercising again. The White House is committed to giving accurate and truthful information to the American people — and we have consistently delivered that through Dr. O’Connor’s thorough letters.”

But what he lacks in filter, O’Connor makes up for in trust. O’Connor first started at the White House in 2006 during the GEORGE W. BUSH administration as part of a three-year assignment. When he finished that tour, Biden asked him to stay on as his physician, which O’Connor did throughout the Obama presidency.

He became an honorary Biden by helping take care of Beau during his fight with cancer. “Doc was good with Beau,” Biden wrote. O’Connor had been deployed on combat rotations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Bosnia. “Doc was Army like Beau, a Delta Force doctor who had been in serious combat. He was almost always calm under pressure,” Biden wrote.

And the affection has been mutual. “All politics aside, he approaches his craft with such honor,” O’Connor said of Biden in an interview with the New York Institute of Technology, where he went to school. “He’s 100 percent ‘family first.’ He’s ‘genuinely genuine.’”

Like many relationships within the Biden orbit, the bond between the two men was cemented during Beau’s battle with cancer.

As Biden wrote in his book:

Beau grabbed Doc’s hand on the way in. “Doc,” he said, “promise you’re going to take care of Pop.”

“You’re going to be around to take care of your dad, Beau.”

“Seriously, Doc. No matter what happens. Take care of Pop. For real. Promise me. For real.”

MESSAGE US — Are you JILL BIDEN’s new press secretary? We want to hear from you! And we’ll keep you anonymous if you’d like. Or if you think we missed something in today’s edition, let us know and we may include it tomorrow. Email us at [email protected].

POTUS PUZZLER

This one’s from Allie. Which president hosted his daughter’s high school prom at the White House?

(Answer at bottom.)

The Oval

FALLING LIKE A SLAB OF GRANITE: Look, we get it, it’s ridiculous early. And it’s only one poll, and not exactly the most reliable polling outfit. But when you fall behind your own transportation secretary in a critical primary state, it’s notable.

That’s the (bad) headline for Biden in a new poll from the University of New Hampshire, which shows that 17 percent of the state’s voters would support Transportation Secretary PETE BUTTIGIEG in the 2024 presidential election. That’s effectively tied with 16 percent who said they would support Biden’s re-election bid. Sen. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-Mass.) comes in third, with 10 percent of respondents saying they’d support her.

Obviously, a lot has to happen before any of this materially matters. But it gives you a snapshot of how bad things have gotten for the president even within his own party. Our OLIVIA OLANDER has more on the poll results.

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ: This piece from NYT’s NOAH WEILAND on how some experts describe Biden’s drug czar RAHUL GUPTA’s views on drug control policy to be “the most progressive since RICHARD NIXON appointed the nation’s first drug czar in 1971.”

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: A new piece in the Wall Street Journal detailing the reluctance of major consumer brands to bring down prices. On Tuesday, executives from the makers of Coca-Cola, Dove shampoo, Huggies and McDonald’s said during a press event that their new, inflation-adjusted prices are here to stay for now.

PELOTON-READY: The president Tuesday finished his five-day course of the Covid antiviral Paxlovid and “now feels well enough to resume his physical exercise regimen,” White House physician Kevin O’Connor said. Biden’s symptoms have “almost completely resolved,” and his pulse, blood pressure, respiratory rate and temperature remain “absolutely normal.”

THE BUREAUCRATS

COMINGS AND GOINGS: STEVEN M. KELLY is now senior director for cybersecurity and emerging technology at the National Security Council, DANIEL LIPPMAN has learned. He most recently was a supervisory special agent and chief of cyber policy at the FBI.

URSELA OJEDA has started as deputy director for immigration at the Domestic Policy Council. She will be reporting to BETSY LAWRENCE, the deputy assistant to the president for immigration, according to a source familiar with the arrangement. She most recently served as immigration counsel to Sen. ALEX PADILLA (D-Calif.) and before that worked at the Women’s Refugee Commission.

Interestingly, Ojeda has been one of the progressive voices previously critical of the administration’s approach to immigration. “The Biden administration was not ordered by the court to expand Remain in Mexico to new populations,” Ojeda said in a press call late last year, as Vox reported. “They are going well above and beyond good faith compliance that’s required of them [by the court] to make this policy more cruel and more deadly.”

MICHAEL LAROSA, first lady JILL BIDEN’s press secretary, will be leaving the position, a role he has been in since the start of the Biden’s time in office, CNN’s KATE BENNETT reports. He was also a Biden spokesperson during the campaign in 2019. LaRosa is headed to Hamilton Place Strategies, a public affairs consulting firm, a source told Bennett.

PETE PILE ON: Democratic Sens. Warren (Mass.) and Padilla (Calif.) are calling on Transportation Secretary Buttigieg to crack down on the airline industry as consumers are increasingly met with surging prices and flight delays and cancellations. They join Sen. BERNIE SANDERS (I-Vt.) who has been also pushing Buttigieg.

They ask that the department “use its full statutory authority more vigorously.” CNN’s MATT EGAN has more details.

Agenda Setting

TIS THE SEASON: The Biden administration Tuesday unveiled a government website, Heat.gov, aimed at helping Americans to prepare for extreme heat and weather conditions this summer, after heat waves were recorded around the world, our ZACK COLMAN reports. The site includes heat maps and guidance for dealing with extreme heat events, using cooling centers and developing response plans.

COOL CATS AND KITTENS AND STATEMENTS OF POLICY: The White House said Tuesday it supports a bill backed by CAROLE BASKIN, of Tiger King fame. Dubbed the Big Cat Public Safety Act, which aims to protect large felines like tigers, cheetahs, jaguars, and more.

What We're Reading

Biden fights talk of recession as key economic report looms (AP’s Josh Boak)

Biden and Xi to tackle deadlocked agenda during call (POLITICO’s Phelim Kine)

Biden Considers New Pause on Paying Back Student Loans, $10,000 Relief (Bloomberg’s Nancy Cook)

U.S. may need $7 billion for monkeypox, Biden administration estimates (WaPo’s Dan Diamond and Tony Romm)

POTUS PUZZLER ANSWER

In 1975, President GERALD FORD hosted the Holton-Arms School senior prom at the White House after his daughter, SUSAN, who attended the Bethesda, Maryland-based school, petitioned for it to be the venue.

A lot went into making the event happen, according to this 2015 Vanity Fair write-up: “The members of the class of ’75 paid the cost of the prom — $1,300 — after raising funds at bake sales and school fairs.

Here are some more details to set the scene: “The menu included those staples of 1970s cuisine, Swedish meatballs and quiche, as well as a nonalcoholic punch made of tea, lemonade, soda, grape juice, and sugar. Susan and her classmates assembled the centerpieces — candles in a setting of daisies, tulips, lilies, sweet peas, and ming fern.”

To top things off, the president and first lady, BETTY, weren’t able to chaperone, as they were on a Europe trip at the time.

A CALL OUT — Do you think you have a more difficult trivia question? Send us your best on the presidents with a citation and we may feature it.

Edited by Eun Kyung Kim and Sam Stein.