At a White House press briefing on Wednesday, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked by a reporter about Biden’s slow response to the current baby formula crisis. As she tried to dance around the real question, reporters continued to press her on why Biden was not informed about the issue until just recently.

Biden has been facing significant backlash over his lack of action to fix the baby formula shortage that is sweeping the nation. The President has pushed back on this criticism, blaming poor communication within his administration for his lack of knowledge of the growing crisis. Biden has claimed that he wasn’t told about this crisis until April – two months after it began. At this point, it had already developed into a major problem nationwide.

“The President just said he didn’t – wasn’t informed about that until April, and then waited a full month to invoke the Defense Production Act and begin ‘Operation Fly Formula’… so what is the reason for the disconnect there, and is he going to hold anyone accountable?” asked a reporter at the White House press briefing.

“So, we have been working on this issue since day one of the recall,” said Jean-Pierre. “The recall happened on February 17th.”

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre

She then went on to describe the action taken by other agencies/organizations, ignoring the question regarding Biden and his involvement in the crisis.

The reporter then reiterated that Biden was not informed of this crisis until April, to which Jean-Pierre responded, “So, look, let me just say that the president is frustrated himself about the situation – about the issue that we have, and he’s frustrated on behalf of the American families.”

Reporters continued to press Jean-Pierre as to why the president was not informed of this crisis by his administration sooner, to which Jean-Pierre continued to speak about the actions that had been taken to fix the crisis… none of which involved the president. As the Press Secretary continuously failed to directly answer the reporters’ questions, they continued to push for direct answers.

“So then perhaps the president wasn’t aware of the work that was going on around the clock since February to address the issue?” a reporter inquired.

“I mean, the president has multiple issues, crises at the moment. You know, when he walked into the administration he talked about the multiple crises that we needed to deal with as a country,” replied Jean-Pierre, suggesting that this was not a high enough priority for the president to be informed about. “And so – so, that’s number one to remember.”

As the President of the United States, it should not be acceptable to say that you were too busy to be bothered with a nationwide crisis. Being the president of a country – particularly the U.S. – is a major responsibility that few are capable of handling. We should not be at the point where we start making excuses for our country’s leader being “too busy” to take notice of a major crisis. That is an unacceptable excuse.

WATCH the full press briefing below:

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