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A horde of impatient journalists began crowding the aisles of the White House briefing on Tuesday long before the daily reporter session began – and they weren’t there for Brian Deese.
In one afternoon, the White House became an exclusive stage for the global K-pop phenomenon BTS, with each of the 49 seats in the briefing room becoming the city’s most coveted ticket. The group was invited by the administration to raise awareness of the spread of anti-Asian discrimination.
“We are BTS,” said RM, whose official name is Kim Nam-jun and is considered the de facto leader of the megagroup when he stepped to the podium in the briefing. “It is a great honor for me to be invited to the White House today to discuss the important issues of hate crimes against Asia, Asian inclusion and diversity.
White House spokeswoman Carin Jean-Pierre, who opened the group, said that while “many of you know the BTS as Grammy-nominated international icons, they also play an important role as youth ambassadors, fostering a message of respect and positivity.”
The other members of the group then took turns transmitting their own messages in Korean. A translator later summed up their various messages, such as “equality begins when we open up and embrace all our differences” and “hopefully today is a step towards respecting and understanding everyone as a valuable person.”
RM then returned to the department.
“Finally, we thank President Biden and the White House for giving us this important opportunity to talk about important causes,” he said. “Remind yourself what we can do as artists.”
After their stellar turn in the briefing room, BTS headed to the Oval Office to meet with the president himself on the last day of May, designated as the month of the heritage of Asian Americans, local Hawaiians and the Pacific Islands. Before joining the briefing, BTS filmed content with the White House digital team and toured the area, according to a White House official.
The Biden group’s visit – which was inexplicably closed to the press – was the latest example of the White House using celebrity power to draw attention to key priorities.
Last July, the administration recruited singer Olivia Rodrigo to promote coronavirus vaccinations. And just last week, the White House brought in actress and singer Selena Gomez to emphasize mental health, with Gomez appearing in a three-minute video with Biden, First Lady Jill Biden and Vivek H. Murtie, the chief surgeon, to discuss the problem.
But at some point on Tuesday, the anti-discrimination message the administration wanted to convey was overshadowed by the sheer hysteria in the briefing hall – and outside the gates of the White House.
Outside, hundreds of fans – mostly young girls – gathered in hopes of taking a distant look at the K-pop group, and as they waited in the blazing sun, they chanted the names of the seven members and shouted, “BTS! BTS!” BTS! ”
Inside, dozens of interested journalists, many of them of Korean descent, crowded the aisles for at least half an hour before the briefing began, making the already cramped room even more suffocating. Veteran reporters jokingly said that the briefing hall had not been as crowded since Sean Spicer’s days as a spokesman when the sessions became mandatory television for all the wrong reasons, at least for the Donald Trump administration.
Tuesday’s live broadcast of the White House briefing usually draws several hundred interested viewers. But long before the session began at 2:30 p.m., about 11,000 had settled in for the show. Ten minutes before the briefing, about 71,000 were online. A few minutes after the official start of the briefing – which began a few minutes after the schedule – an incredible 197,000 watched.
More than 300,000 were still on the show as Deese, director of the White House National Economic Council, stepped to the podium and began speaking. (The number of views dropped sharply the longer Deese talked about inflation.)
“Okay, so I have to go home and tell my kids that BTS opened for me,” Deese said as reporters laughed. “I did not expect this when I woke up this morning. And I know you’re all here to talk about reduced average inflation, and you’re as excited about it as you are about it.
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