Naomi Biden’s Vogue wedding photos incite new White House controversy

Naomi Biden, the granddaughter of President Biden, called her glamorous White House wedding to fellow attorney Peter Neal Saturday “the best day ever.”

But her special day has formed the backdrop of a new White House scandal of debatable proportions, due to the Biden family’s choice to allow Vogue magazine to photograph Naomi in her Ralph Lauren gown at the White House before the ceremony. Some prominent White House correspondents are angry that the fashion magazine got exclusive access to the bride after the Biden administration earlier said no to any media coverage of a “private family event.”

For Vogue’s special digital cover, Naomi Biden, the eldest granddaughter of President Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, opens up about planning a White House wedding, and the details—no matter how small—that made it a spectacular family affair. https://t.co/B97vxf8ZAK

— Vogue Magazine (@voguemagazine) November 22, 2022

The outrage has been led by Washington Post’s senior national correspondent Ashley Parker, who reacted to Vogue publishing its exclusive cover photos of Naomi Biden Tuesday, by tweeting: “I spent four years covering the Trump WH and two years covering the Biden WH. What’s fascinating is that they both lie, albeit in v different ways. Trump team was shameless, whereas Biden team is too cute by half.”

The crux of Parker’s complaint appears to be a tweet from CNN’s correspondent Kate Bennett, who said the White House “waved” her off after she learned in October that Vogue had been tapped to do a wedding shoot with Naomi Biden. Bennett suggested that the White House was using a “loophole” to say it hadn’t played favorites or lied about the wedding being “private” because the family staged the Vogue photos of Naomi Biden before the ceremony.

Indeed, the Vogue photo shoot occurred on Thursday, two days before the wedding. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also said Vogue complied with an embargo to hold off sharing its exclusive images for its cover story until Tuesday, Insider reported.

This delay allowed Corbin Gurkin, the official wedding photographer, to post his photos from the ceremony on Monday. The White House also shared a formal portrait of the bride and groom, with President Biden and first lady Jill Biden, on Saturday.

“This was not a national security meeting, this was not an economic summit,” Jean-Pierre said at a press briefing Monday, in response to the brouhaha, Insider reported. “This was a young couple’s wedding with their friends and family.”

At a press briefing Friday, reporters made the case for the news media to cover the wedding, saying the private ceremony defied precedent for “the people’s house,” Insider reported. Another reporter noted that there is a historic record of other White House weddings because the media was granted limited access to the events. Since 1800, there have been 19 weddings and four receptions at the White House, including one for President Grover Cleveland and nine for first daughters, according to Vogue.

“‘Private’ per @PressSec = not for the White House press corps,” Bennett also tweeted.

As Parker and other White House reporters aired their concerns about the Vogue photoshoot, their backlash incited even more fierce counter-backlash. It was mostly aimed at Parker. People joked that she was mad she wasn’t invited to the wedding, while others pointedly said she and her colleagues should focus on more pressing news while arguing that Naomi Biden doesn’t owe them any explanations.

Writer Roxane Gay asked, “What on earth are you doing?” She said also said that brides frequently stage photo shoots in their gowns ahead of their wedding.

On a more serious note, Gay and others angrily questioned how Parker could in any way equate the Biden administration’s alleged lie about the wedding with any of the lies told by former President Trump and his administration. Gay also asked: “Also are you seriously equating a private wedding to a president who fomented an insurrection? That is unserious but also so dangerous.”

“Right?!” tweeted political consultant Fred Wellman, recounting some of the some 30,000 false or misleading statements coming from Trump and his administration officials during his four years in office, per the Washington Post.  “Lying about a pandemic, immigration system destruction, seeking to have the DOJ investigate your political enemies, covering up corruption in your own family, and your foreign entanglements vs. your granddaughter’s wedding! Totally the same!”

In quickly doubling down on her tweet, Parker agreed that “Not all lies are created equal and the magnitude, frequency and audacity is certainly different.” But she argued that the Biden White House “has also waived us off correct reporting about Biden’s SCOTUS pick, his Egypt trip, attendees in private meetings, etc.”

Parker appeared to get support for making an issue about White House statements about the wedding from the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, who covered the Trump White House. She tweeted: “We cover the small lies politicians tell because they can give way to bigger ones, for folks wondering why this is news. That’s what the press is supposed to do.”

But MSNBC columnist Marisa Kabas suggested that Parker and other reporters were being disingenuous in claiming noble reasons for complaining about the Vogue cover shoot or lack of access to the wedding. She tweeted: “Let’s be honest: DC reporters wanted access to naomi biden’s wedding to get access to her dad, hunter. pretending to be mad that vogue did a photoshoot two days earlier and framing it as some conspiracy rings pretty false.”