‘Hidin’ Joe Biden’ Emerges for Event at ‘Hideaway’ Sports Bar

Former Vice President Joe Biden emerged from his Wilmington, Delaware, home on Wednesday to hold an event at a bar named “hideaway” — in the midst of criticism that he has not held a press conference in 76 days.

Biden plans to deliver an address on a “safer economic reopening” from Carlette’s Hideaway Sports Bar, according to Julia Terruso of the Philadelphia Enquirer.

Biden will stop in Carlette’s HideAway Sports Bar today in Landsdowne to talk about reopening the economy. Campaign staff putting up signs on the bar ahead of his arrival. pic.twitter.com/nVMGWzppei

— Julia Terruso (@JuliaTerruso) June 17, 2020

Biden meeting now with the owners of the bar, a local bookstore owner and the owner of a catering company in Swarthmore. pic.twitter.com/KyIVexSTOT

— Julia Terruso (@JuliaTerruso) June 17, 2020

Earlier in the day, the Daily Mail White House correspondent, David Martosko, noted that it had been more than two months since Biden last took questions from the press — and on that occasion, in early April, he only answered four:

Here's something weird. It's been 76 days since Joe Biden held a press conference. It was April 2 and he only took 4 questions. Hillary Clinton was talking to us a *lot* at this point in 2016. And of course Donald Trump ran us ragged with Q&As. https://t.co/GL1tPzsUt8

— David Martosko (@dmartosko) June 17, 2020

Biden has often been reluctant to face the press. He avoided every single “spin room” in nearly a dozen Democratic presidential primary debates in 2019 and 2020. In 2008, then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) kept Biden under wraps for several weeks after he had been named to the presidential ticket, letting the press attack Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and keeping the gaffe-prone Biden out of trouble.

Some Democrats, notably former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, have applauded the campaign’s practice of keeping Biden out of the public eye — or “hidin’ Biden,” as critics describe it.

Last week, Fox News obtained a recording of McAuliffe telling fellow Democrats: “”People say all the time, ‘Oh, we got to get the vice president out of the basement. … He’s fine in the basement. Two people see him a day: his two body people. That’s it. Let Trump keep doing what Trump’s doing.”

Yelp describes Carlette’s Hideaway as a soul food restaurant. Patrons give it four out of five stars.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, is available for pre-order. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.