Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Max Ever since JOE BIDEN came down with Covid, press secretary KARINE JEAN-PIERRE and Covid response coordinator ASHISH JHA have struggled to answer one basic question: Why has the president’s personal doctor, KEVIN O’CONNOR, not personally been briefing reporters? O’Connor has not been seen in public over the past week, despite tending to the world’s most powerful man as he deals with contracting the virus. Instead, he simply writes short daily letters that update the public on Biden’s condition, which the White House puts out. Publicly, Jha and Jean-Pierre say there’s nothing unusual about the arrangement even though it’s been de rigueur for the president’s physician to brief the press on certain occasions for decades. Behind the scenes, White House and administration officials say that it’s part of a communications strategy to focus attention away from the 79-year-old president being sick and toward the administration’s larger pandemic response. Plus, they argue that a briefing by the physician isn't necessary when the president's symptoms are mild. But that’s only part of the story. Another reason is that O’Connor, while beloved by the president who affectionately calls him “Doc,” is not always the most disciplined of messengers, according to former Biden aides and other people familiar. “He tells a joke a minute, and a funny one every four minutes,” said one former Biden aide who likes O’Connor and finds the trait endearing. As proof, in an interview earlier this year with the Federation of State Medical Boards , O’Connor quipped: “I joined a cult – I’m a Pelotonian." It was a reference to the exercise bike the president also has been known to ride. Was this one of the 25 percent of his funny lines? You decide. Biden himself recalled an awkward case of O’Connor’s bedside manner in his memoir, “Promise Me, Dad.” When the family learned that BEAU may have an aggressive form of brain cancer called glioblastoma, JILL BIDEN asked O’Connor what the best medical facility to go to would be. “[O’Connor] blurted out, without thinking — because he would not allow himself to believe it could be the worst — ‘If it’s The Monster, it doesn’t matter where we go,’” Biden wrote. He added: “Jill burst into tears.” The president also wrote of O’Connor’s bluntness in another section when Biden didn’t want to cancel a trip to South America in early 2015, even though he was sick. Biden recalls O’Connor saying: “I know this is important, sir, but you have pneumonia. And right now, you look like shit. I can’t make you not look like shit.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the White House declined to make O’Connor available for an interview. A White House official said that "the only reason Dr. O’Connor has not been in the briefing room is because, thankfully, the President started with mild symptoms and they have almost completely resolved, to the extent that he is now exercising again. The White House is committed to giving accurate and truthful information to the American people — and we have consistently delivered that through Dr. O’Connor’s thorough letters." But what he lacks in filter, O’Connor makes up for in trust. O’Connor first started at the White House in 2006 during the GEORGE W. BUSH administration as part of a three-year assignment. When he finished that tour, Biden asked him to stay on as his physician, which O’Connor did throughout the Obama presidency. He became an honorary Biden by helping take care of Beau during his fight with cancer. “Doc was good with Beau,” Biden wrote. O’Connor had been deployed on combat rotations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Bosnia. “Doc was Army like Beau, a Delta Force doctor who had been in serious combat. He was almost always calm under pressure,” Biden wrote. And the affection has been mutual. “All politics aside, he approaches his craft with such honor,” O’Connor said of Biden in an interview with the New York Institute of Technology , where he went to school. “He’s 100 percent ‘family first.’ He’s ‘genuinely genuine.’” Like many relationships within the Biden orbit, the bond between the two men was cemented during Beau’s battle with cancer. As Biden wrote in his book: Beau grabbed Doc’s hand on the way in. “Doc,” he said, “promise you’re going to take care of Pop.” “You’re going to be around to take care of your dad, Beau.” “Seriously, Doc. No matter what happens. Take care of Pop. For real. Promise me. For real.” MESSAGE US — Are you JILL BIDEN’s new press secretary? We want to hear from you! And we’ll keep you anonymous if you’d like. Or if you think we missed something in today’s edition, let us know and we may include it tomorrow. Email us at westwingtips@politico.com .
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