Joe Biden, border dodger

President Joe Biden doesn’t answer many questions without his handler-approved list of reporters.

So when he does occasionally go rogue, you can rest assured his answers are coming from the heart.

Last week, when Fox News reporter Peter Doocy — or as Joe likes to call him, the “one-horse pony” — asked the president why he didn’t plan on visiting the border during his trip to Arizona, Joe had a rare moment of honesty.

“There are more important things going on,” he shouted on the White House South Lawn.

Arizonans — and the rest of America — might disagree. A Gallup poll earlier this year showed that 41 percent of Americans worry “a great deal” about illegal immigration.

In August, Arizona governor Doug Ducey, frustrated by the lack of help from the Biden administration, instructed crews to fill gaps in the border fencing with shipping containers. A few months later in October, the Bureau of Reclamation asked the state to remove them. Ducey ignored the request and has continued to send the shipping containers to the makeshift border wall.

At a press conference last week, a bipartisan group of lawmakers explained another facet of the border crisis: fourteen Custom and Border Protection employees have committed suicide in 2022 and six have been killed in the line of duty.

Does any of this seem important yet, Joe? If not, we should probably go over the pressing items that comprise Biden’s “More Important Things To Do” List.

Let’s review.

Joe and Jill Biden recently strolled the cobblestone streets of Nantucket and shopped while enjoying their Thanksgiving vacation. The family stayed at a $30 million compound owned by private equity billionaire David Rubenstein.

Last week, the Big Guy, Dr. B and even the pipe artist known as Hunter rubbed elbows with beautiful celebrities at the Kennedy Center Honors. Sophisticated stars in attendance included Bono, George Clooney, Matt Damon and Julia Roberts — to name a few.

On Friday, Joe capped off his fun-filled week by taping a rare TV sit-down interview with America’s most hard-hitting reporter: the actress Drew Barrymore. Hooray for Hollywood!

When it comes to Joe Biden’s list of presidential priorities, lobster dinners and A-list encounters rank a lot higher than the concerns of non-famous, non-fancy American citizens.

Even White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who usually tries to walk back her boss’s fumbles, doubled down on Joe’s callous attitude toward the border.

When Doocy asked her if the president would respond to Kevin McCarthy’s invite to visit the border, Jean-Pierre laughed out loud. She then accused Republicans of “doing political stunts.”

Similarly, back in October 2021, Jean-Pierre’s predecessor Jen Psaki told the press corps that Biden didn’t need a “photo-op” at the border.

Surely the brilliant members of the Biden administration realize that almost everything their boss does is a photo-op, right?

For example, Biden certainly wasn’t opposed to posing in a warm embrace with Brittney Griner’s wife in the Oval Office last week. Nor did he have any qualms about saying cheese to the photographers while he and French president Emmanuel Macron chowed down on bowls of ice cream.

In all fairness, when it comes to being the president of the United States, photo-ops are a big part of the gig.

For example, President Biden wasn’t visiting the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. site in Arizona because he was planning to hop on the assembly line. By touring the facility and delivering prepared remarks, the president is showing the world that he cares about TSMC’s $40 billion investment and about the law passed earlier this year designed to boost US semiconductor production.

But Biden’s refusal to acknowledge we even have a southern border, let alone to go near it, sends a very different message: he does not care about the immigration crisis or the people who are struggling to deal with it.

So what would it take to change his mind?

Perhaps the president would venture south if he found out that a bunch of tuxedo-clad movie stars were attending a red-carpet event there. If Jeni’s Ice Cream sponsored the event, well, the Big Guy wouldn’t be able to resist.

Until then, don’t expect the commander-in-chief to get a first-hand account of the crisis that his policies have exacerbated. As I’m sure he’ll tell you in his upcoming interview with Drew Barrymore, there are more important things going on.