According to an Axios scoop, President Biden’s staffers prepare instructions with large pictures that help the POTUS find his way in and out of event venues. This includes the path to and from the podium.
“I staffed a simple fundraiser at a private residence, but they treated it like it was a NATO summit with his movements,” according to a person who staffed a Biden event in the past 18 months.
According to the report, the large-picture instructions showing Biden where to go have been templated and are used before many presidential events.
From Axios:
One template — a copy of which was obtained by Axios — is short and simple, with one large picture of the event space on each page, accompanied with big text such as: “View from podium,” and “View from audience.”
In the five-page document, two pages are separate pictures of, “Walk to podium.”
The staffer who helped with the fundraiser told Axios: “It surprised me that a seasoned political pro like the president would need detailed verbal and visual instructions on how to enter and exit a room.”
A White House official told Axios: “If individuals are not accustomed to seeing advance teams work, that would be a common reaction, whoever the principal is.”
Two former aides who worked with Biden during his vice presidency said that at that time his preparation documents were different, and more often relied on site diagrams.
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates told Axios that “high levels of detail and precision are critical to presidential advance work — regardless of who is president — and these are basic approaches that are used by any modern advance team, including the vice president’s office and agencies.”
More over at Axios:
Scoop: A look at the template that the WH sends to staffers organizing events for POTUS.
"I staffed a simple fundraiser at a private residence, but they treated it like it was a NATO summit with his movements," a person who staffed a Biden event said.https://t.co/yQi7VwKKNg pic.twitter.com/DYjT03wXWF
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) July 7, 2024
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