COMING TO TERMS WITH THE BIDEN SENILITY COVER-UP. Understanding the press’s handling of then-President Joe Biden’s obvious physical and mental infirmity is probably more a matter for psychologists than for media analysts. Why were journalists and commentators so willing to deny what their own eyes and ears told them? Did sheer bias — there was unquestionably a lot of that — fully account for what happened?
Take one example. On June 10, 2024, just 17 days before the presidential debate that would lead to his withdrawal from the race, Biden appeared at a musical event on the White House lawn to celebrate Juneteenth. Singer Kirk Franklin and a band were playing, people all around were swaying and clapping and singing, and Biden … froze.
“Biden stood perfectly motionless, his eyes seemingly fixed on some distant point,” this newsletter wrote at the time. “His hands hung motionless by his side. He had what appeared to be a frozen smile.” This was not a fleeting moment in time. It went on for nearly two minutes, with Biden only occasionally seeming to make contact with what was happening around him. You can see it in this unedited Associated Press video, from around 18:20 to 21:00.
It was clear, it was troubling, and it was undeniable. And yet when Republicans pointed it out, the White House immediately denied that there had been any problem whatsoever. Many in the press took up the White House position. Those terrible Republicans! Lying again about the president!
Reading their arguments today is embarrassing. Take this account by the Washington Post fact checker. The headline was “‘Cheapfake’ Biden videos enrapture right-wing media, but deeply mislead.” The article covered two Biden videos, both pushed by the Republican National Committee. The first was the president’s apparent wandering off during a visit to Europe in which Biden’s moves could arguably, although not convincingly, be characterized as normal. The second was the Juneteenth incident, which was in no way normal.
Fact checker Glenn Kessler explained that Biden did not freeze at the concert — he just wasn’t dancing. From the article: “Biden, as he did in this 2009 Associated Press interview, has often said he doesn’t dance. ‘Joe Biden wants to make one thing clear: He can’t dance,’ the article said, quoting him as saying ‘the reason I want to keep talking is because I can’t dance.’ The article noted that at an inaugural ball he danced ‘stiffly’ with his wife Jill. ‘I may not be able to dance, but I sure like holding her,’ Biden said.”
Then, the Washington Post went to White House spokesman Andrew Bates, who labeled the video a “cheap fake.” “Unfortunately, some of President Biden’s right-wing critics don’t respect their readers or themselves and resort to misinformation and cheap fakes because his performance in office — fueling the strongest economic growth in the world, bringing violent crime to historic lows, and advancing our national security in the world — is so threatening to them that they feel a need to make things up,” Bates said.
The article was published on June 15, 2024, just 12 days before the presidential debate, after which everyone involved with the story, except the RNC, looked terrible.
Now, there is a new discussion about this because a new book describes the lengths to which White House officials, from Bates on up to the top, went to hide Biden’s mental and physical deterioration. Authors Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper write that Biden and his family and top aides “lied to themselves, allies, and the public about his condition and limitations.”
Will there be any sort of reckoning? Probably not. Certainly not for the White House staffers and Democratic politicians who vouched for Biden’s vigor at the time. Now, they’re saying, “I had no idea! He seemed fine when I saw him!”
And what about the press? For whatever reason, many of them accepted the White House’s “cheap fake” explanation for the videos. It would be nice to have a few first-person accounts by leading journalists describing their thought processes at the time.
Finally, there’s one obvious factor behind this. Maybe it’s not the only one, but it is the biggest one, and that factor is President Donald Trump. When the race was Trump vs. Biden, many politicians, activists, journalists, and commentators worked themselves into such a frenzy about Trump that they simply could not, or would not, face the obvious truth about Biden. And then they ended up getting Trump anyway, even after top Democrats muscled Biden out of the race. Now, they might as well face what was really happening when Biden was in the White House.