From Jake Tapper to Chuck Todd, the media in Washington has become a chorus of Claude Rains expressing how “shocked, shocked” they are about the mental diminishment of former President Joe Biden. These are some of the same journalists who attacked those who raised the issue for years. Now, polls are showing that the public is not buying the deflection. Sixty-three percent of those surveyed in the most recent poll say it is “likely” that “major media journalists were aware of Joe Biden’s declining mental condition, but covered it up.” The evidence is mounting of a coordinated campaign to conceal Biden’s demonstrable incapacity from White House staff to doctors to the media.
Reporters like Fox’s Peter Doocy were openly mocked by some of the same White House press corps members now expressing outrage over the cover-up. This morning Doocy recounted how he was virtually heckled in the press room when he raised questions of Biden’s diminishment.
Now, these reporters are insisting that they had no inkling it was this bad. No one is buying it, but it does not appear to matter.
Given the stories on Fox and a few outlets on the cover-up for years, it is insulting to tell the public that the degree of decline was kept from them. It is akin to describing rioting as “fiery but mostly peaceful.” The public could see the decline with their own eyes on the media outlets willing to cover the story.
In the meantime, the scope of the cover-up is coming to light. This week, it was disclosed that the White House devised an alternative to making Biden available to the press given his cognitive decline. They faked a town hall to take clips for the campaign to create the false image of Biden interacting with questions. The problem was that Biden could not stay focused and cogent for five minutes.
The footage was described as “unusable.”
So, in addition to hiding the President’s decline, White House and campaign officials tried to create a false image of Biden as being able to engage in the simplest interactions. One source said “the man could not speak” and showed an “inability to find words, to remember what he was saying, to stay on one train of thought. Aides would sometimes make the videos in slow motion to blur the reality of how slowly he actually walked … If he was off, editing footage in a way that cast him in the best light would require hours of work.”
So the same media that helped in this cover-up and attacked those pursuing the story will continue to report while claiming shock at the story.
“Let’s Go Brandon!” became a familiar political battle cry not just against former President Joe Biden but also against the mainstream media. It was first heard during an Oct. 2021 interview with race-car driver Brandon Brown after winning his first NASCAR Xfinity Series race. When NBC reporter Kelli Stavast’s questions were drowned out by loud and clear chants of “F— Joe Biden,” the reporter quickly and inexplicably declared, “You can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go, Brandon!’”
“Let’s Go Brandon!” instantly became a type of “Yankee Doodling” of the political and media establishment.
The public’s response has been deafening. Readers and viewers have left mainstream media in a mass exodus. Despite falling revenues and ratings, most media outlets seem entirely clueless or, at least, unyielding. Even as media outlets plummet in revenue, editors and reporters continue to saw at the branch upon which they are sitting.
When Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos brought in Robert Lewis, a British media executive, to try to restore profitability and readership to the paper, he was met with a virtual mutiny. Lewis nevertheless dropped this truth bomb in the middle of the newsroom: “We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around. We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”
The media continues to interview and write for itself. Tapper is being interviewed by the same media that joined him in actively suppressing the story.
Call it implausible deniability. It is enough to allow the media to continue to feign independence and objectivity. Everyone can return to the same inbred media circles and cocktail parties while blaming the White House for their lack of investigation. It is just a shrug and a spin from journalists who acted like a de facto state media.