The Latest: East Room set for Biden's first news conference

The scene is set for President Joe Biden’s first formal news conference in the East Room of the White House on Thursday afternoon

Biden (Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

The Latest on President Joe Biden s first news conference since taking office Jan. 20 (all times local):

11:15 a.m.

The scene is set for President Joe Biden’s first formal news conference in the East Room of the White House on Thursday afternoon.

It’ll look quite from past presidential news conferences, given the coronavirus pandemic.

The presidential lectern is on a rug before American and presidential flags in the expansive room. Just 30 socially distanced chairs are set out, and the White House is limiting attendance at the news conference due to the virus.

Microphones will be shuttled to reporters by White House aides and will be sanitized before being passed to the next journalist. Biden has gone longer than any recent president in waiting to hold an initial formal news conference. He took office Jan. 20.

___

10:30 a.m.

President Joe Biden has been in the White House since Jan. 20., but only on Thursday, more than two months after taking office, is he holding his first formal news conference.

Biden is the first chief executive in four decades to reach this point in his term without having conducted such a question-and-answer session. The president is set to meet with reporters for the nationally televised afternoon event in the East Room.

Biden has been on pace with his predecessors in taking questions from the press in other formats. But he tends to field just one or two informal inquiries at a time, usually in a hurried setting at the end of an event or in front of a whirring helicopter.

Pressure had mounted on Biden to hold a formal session, which allows reporters to have an extended back-and-forth with the president. Biden’s conservative critics have pointed to the delay to suggest that Biden was being shielded by his staff.

West Wing aides have dismissed the questions about a news conference as a Washington obsession.