“Being truth-tellers also means telling the truth about ourselves. We, myself included, missed a lot of this story. President Biden‘s decline and its cover-up by the people around him is a reminder that every White House, regardless of party, is capable of deception.”
Those were the words of Axios reporter Alex Thompson at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in his retrospective prognosis of the media’s handling of the coverage, or lack thereof, of former President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline.
And quite frankly, the prognosis was insulting.
For starters, Biden’s decline was impossible to miss. It couldn’t be “covered up” because it played out in broad daylight for years, dating back to the 2020 campaign. As for the press being deceived, anyone with eyes, ears, and sanity saw and heard Biden shake hands with the air upon completing a speech and experience difficulty finding his way off the stage.
Biden was also an octogenarian who claimed to have conversations with world leaders who died years ago, couldn’t remember the names of his Cabinet members, and was told to call only on hand-picked reporters during the rare occasions he would hold a press conference.
Yet Thompson and other media members are saying they were “misled” by the Biden White House. Please. They all knew. The hope was that Biden would survive the June 27, 2024, debate against President Donald Trump in Atlanta or at least count on Trump being the focus of negative coverage, and then run the 2020 playbook of doing the bare minimum of campaigning and interviews, and vanquish Trump on Nov. 5.
Of course, none of that happened. The craziest month in presidential campaign history began the night of the Biden-Trump debate. It included Trump nearly being assassinated on July 13, Trump’s surprising selection of Vice President JD Vance on July 15 at the Republican National Convention, and Biden dropping out on July 21. Forty-eight hours later, Democrats coalesced around former Vice President Kamala Harris, the most unpopular vice president in polling history.
This was the ultimate bias of omission, stemming from a visceral loathing of Trump.
Ultimately, Biden was exposed at the debate in Atlanta, and we got Harris as the nominee. She went on to blow $1.5 billion in campaign funds in under 100 days, only to lose the popular vote and every swing state, all while Republicans took back the Senate and held the House.
So, how are other media members responding to Thompson’s semi-admonishment of them at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner? They’re mostly in denial, with former Meet the Press and MSNBC host Chuck Todd leading the way with arguably the most tone-deaf analysis possible.
“I just refuse to accept this stupid premise because it’s a right-wing-manufactured, right-wing premise in order to sustain the media,” Todd recently argued to former CNN pundit Chris Cillizza on his Substack channel.
“This is an attempt by some to virtue-signal, and it’s this horrible sort of pitting different news organizations against each other when ultimately the people at fault are Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Jill Biden, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, every elected member of Congress,” he added.
“Did the media not show him being old, not show him shuffling, not show him using the baby staircase? No, you know why that’s all out there? Because the media f***ing showed it,” he continued.
Oh please. For starters, blaming the media for not covering one of the biggest stories of our lifetime isn’t a “right-wing-manufactured, right-wing premise,” but an accurate one. Schumer, Pelosi, Jill Biden, Harris, and Congress didn’t suddenly learn how to do a Jedi mind trick and hypnotize the press into believing Biden had the mental prowess of Stephen Hawking and the physical attributes of Sequon Barkley. Politicians lie and exaggerate all the time, but in this case, the evidence was apparent for all to see. One didn’t need to take anyone at their word.
As for Todd’s argument that the media showed Biden shuffling or using the baby staircase, sure, it did. But those instances were always couched with admonishment for anyone daring to question his mental decline.
Two days before Biden’s disastrous debate performance in Atlanta, then-CNN media “reporter” Oliver Darcy said, “For years, and particularly over the last few months, MAGA Media has portrayed Biden as a senile, mentally incapacitated elderly man who cannot remember what he had for breakfast, let alone run the federal government. That might sound like an exaggeration to those who don’t tune in to Fox News or listen to talk radio, but it has been a real and constant theme in the right-wing media universe.”
“To support the narrative, these outlets and personalities have seized on Biden’s verbal gaffes (while ignoring Trump’s) and presented out-of-context video clips to their large audiences — a deceptive, but effective strategy that the Biden campaign has struggled to meaningfully rebut,” he added.
That aged well, didn’t it?
How about this beauty from Joe Scarborough in the spring of 2024?
“Start your tape right now, because I’m about to tell you the truth,” the Morning Joe host implored his viewers. “And eff you if you can’t handle the truth. This version of Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second. And I’ve known him for years.”
That aged like milk left in a sauna.
Then there was the “cheap fakes” narrative pushed by former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre six days before the debate, which was also aggressively pushed by some of the country’s top newspapers.
“Videos of Biden are clearly manipulated to make him look old and confused,” the New York Times reported on June 21, 2024.
“How Republicans used misleading videos to attack Biden in a 24-hour period,” said the Washington Post‘s front-page headline on June 11, 2024, with the subheadline: Such deceptively edited videos, known as “cheap fakes,” have become staples of Republican attacks against the president.
So no, Todd, the media got it completely wrong by showing the footage you mentioned of Biden, only to frame such instances as cheap fakes because the Biden White House told them to. It’s that simple.
As for learning any lessons, don’t hold your breath. A Media Research Center analysis found that Trump’s first 100 days were covered to the tune of 92% positive on ABC, NBC, and CBS. Meanwhile, Biden’s first 100 days generated 59% positive coverage. Add it up, and that’s a 151-point swing from positive to negative.
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Legacy media didn’t miss Biden’s brain turning to apple sauce. They purposely and willingly ignored it or excused it.
All the remorse and mea culpa in the world over Biden won’t change the fact that the public will likely never trust them again.