The White House is denying this photo op has anything to do with Gates’ book, despite the fact that they never allow the press to take picture of them eating together and it just happens to be the day after the book excerpts were released.

Via National Journal:

If you want proof that the White House is worried about the new memoir from former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, just look at the attention Vice President Joe Biden is getting from the press office today.

The White House was hit yesterday with a bombshell from the former Cabinet secretary that had Washington talking. Other than Gates’s revelations that the president questioned his own strategy in Afghanistan, the book also showed a level of mistrust in Biden. Gates wrote that the vice president was “a man of integrity.” But, he continues, “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

So, how does the White House try to tamp down concern that the president does not trust the vice president’s judgment? Well, first you release a statement, which the White House did. […]

Then you turn to the official public schedule for the president. Every weekday evening, the White House Press Office releases the president’s public schedule for the next day, announcing travel plans, a major speech, or a visit from a foreign dignitary or Cabinet secretary. But the schedule can sometimes play as a political tool. […]

For those unfamiliar with the president’s schedule every day, this is a bit unusual. Obama and Biden usually meet for lunch on a weekly basis. That’s not unusual. What is, however, is the “stills only pool spray” after the lunch.

In White House press-speak, that means photographers following the president’s public actions that day will get to snap photos of the two men together. This is a move by the White House to show the pair, likely looking happy and friendly, together in the White House, promoting a narrative that the president trusts the vice president’s counsel. This photographic opportunity rarely, if ever, happens, judging by a review of the public schedule in recent months.

The White House, meanwhile, is denying the photo op has to do with the Gates book. Instead, it’s about making “good on our promise to provide more access.”