WASHINGTON — President Biden chose not to answer questions Thursday about the dramatic unraveling of his son Hunter’s probation-only plea deal — as the White House blamed “diplomatic conversations” for the glaring lack of a press conference with visiting Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Biden, 80, ignored shouted questions at both of his public daytime events when journalists asked him about the implosion of Hunter’s “sweetheart” plea to two tax fraud misdemeanors and a gun charge felony.

While greeting Meloni in the Oval Office, Biden instead reminisced about his Italian-American neighbors as a child — claiming he was “self-conscious” because his last name didn’t end in an “O” — and even bragging, “I’m the only non-Italian named the Man of the Year by the Italian Society.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was left to speak on his behalf and contended that the first son’s aborted deal amounted to a “personal issue” for Hunter, even though congressional Republicans are threatening to launch an impeachment inquiry into the elder Biden’s alleged role in his son’s lucrative foreign business relationships.

Jean-Pierre insisted she was “not going to comment beyond what I did yesterday” — referring to an earlier statement that there would be no official response to the courtroom developments — before declaring with a firm “no” that the president would not pardon his 53-year-old son.

The press secretary took a barrage of questions on the fact that Biden would not appear at a joint press conference with Meloni — who Jean-Pierre said planned instead to stand on the White House’s nearly 100-degree driveway to take questions. That idea was later abandoned.

“Today Prime Minister Meloni is coming to the sticks, she’s having a press conference at the Italian embassy, so it appears that it is the US that does not want to have a joint press conference. Is that true? And if it’s not, why aren’t you having one?” asked CBS reporter Weijia Jiang.

“I would not say that is true,” Jean-Pierre said, before adding, “I was not part of the deliberation on this with our National Security Council … I have not asked the National Security Council on this on how those conversations went … you would have to really speak to the prime minister on how they are proceeding.”

“As press secretary, you are not part of the conversation?” pressed Jiang, president-elect of the White House Correspondents’ Association.

“A diplomatic conversation with another country? That goes through the NSC,” Jean-Pierre said.

Catherine Lucey of the Wall Street Journal later pointed out that Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump had honored their Italian counterparts with a joint press conference and asked, “is there something different here with this particular prime minister?”

“Nope, nothing different here,” Jean-Pierre maintained. “Again, when we do these bilateral visits … there’s a diplomatic conversation that happens … and a decision is made.”

Lucey asked whether Jean-Pierre would “be able to tell us at a later date” about the deviation from tradition.

“They’re doing their own press conference, she is going to the sticks, you can ask them why they chose that path,” Jean-Pierre said.

In real-time, another journalist asked a contact at the Italian embassy in Washington and read aloud their reply.

Gray Television correspondent Jon Decker said, “You suggested reaching out to the Italian embassy as it relates to why there is no press conference today … I reached out to them during the briefing and what they said was, ‘We didn’t insist knowing that you would not accept.’ Is that accurate?”

“I have no idea — I mean, you’re asking me to comment on something that they said,” Jean-Pierre said.

“I haven’t even spoken to the team yet … What I can say is it isn’t a unilateral decision, it’s a conversation that happens with the visiting country.”

The Italian embassy did not immediately respond to The Post’s own request for comment.

Biden has averaged 10.3 press conferences per year while in office — far fewer than Trump’s 22 and Obama’s 20.4, according to data on press conferences published by the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

NBC reporter Peter Alexander pressed Jean-Pierre to return with an answer about the lack of a press conference with Meloni and “all of the ones that have come previously — because there have been a lot of foreign leaders now who have come to the sticks, which many of us in the room have not had that experience before and certainly not on a 100-plus degree heat index day.”

“Yep,” Jean-Pierre said.

The tense briefing concluded after Salon reporter Brian Karem recommended that Jean-Pierre invite Biden to appear for his first time as president in the briefing room to take questions, saying controversy about his fitness “would all be cleared up if we could ask him to step out of that door into this room for 45 minutes.”

“I appreciate the question,” the press secretary replied, “and I get it and the president understands you guys want to ask him questions and have the opportunity for him to answer your questions.”