Political Animals: Olivia Nuzzi

The Crisis Crisis How the White House polices language in Washington—including the president’s.

AT WILMINGTON COUNTRY club recently, after playing his first round of golf as president, Joe Biden engaged in another cherished pastime: He made a gaffe. Speaking to reporters, Biden used the term crisis to refer to the state of the U.S.-Mexico border, where historic numbers of desperate migrants have arrived—urged, in some cases, by smugglers who promise that the new president is unlike the old one, that this one will let them in. “We’re gonna increase the numbers,” Biden said. “The problem was that the refugee part was working on the crisis that ended up on the border with young people, and we couldn’t do two things at once.”

This was a casual (and not entirely articulate) break with months of linguistic contortions from his administration, whose officials have insisted the word crisis does not apply to the border. “We’ve been calling it ‘challenging,’ and it is,” Press Secretary Jen Psaki told me. The issue—can we call it an issue? The White House probably prefers subject—has provided a glimpse into the messaging machinations surrounding the president and the unusual degree to which his staff seeks to control the narrative (and often succeeds) by controlling the press and the president himself. It has also emphasized how a highly particular and rigid approach to language is a form of governing itself, just as a careless and inflammatory one was under Donald Trump.