Pro-Biden press are now in shame-dodge mode

They hid the truth, lied on behalf of authority and attacked people who were accurate in reporting former President Biden’s cognitive decline, but a year on those same blinkered, self-important pundits are shifting the blame for their failures, writes Tim Blair.

Last week marked the first anniversary of one of the most disastrous campaign stunts in recent US political history: then-President Joe Biden’s debate challenge to rival Donald Trump.

“Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020,” Biden, attempting a tough-guy act, said on X. “Since then, he hasn’t shown up for a debate.

“Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal. I’ll even do it twice.”

Spoiler alert: he wouldn’t do it twice. Biden’s first debate performance was so confused, halting and scrambled that Democrat Party bosses had him yanked from the race and replaced by vice presidential gigglemaniac Kamala Harris.

That debate is the subject of renewed attention in the US, because numerous journalists and Democrats – but I repeat myself – now insist it was the first time they’d noticed how far into la-la land Biden had wandered.

Seriously. All those multimillion per year TV pundits, whose lowest-tier wardrobe staffers probably earn more than our prime minister, and who had greater and closer access to the White House than anyone else besides the president’s family, hadn’t previously picked up on Biden’s doolally descent.

Former President Joe Biden became increasingly incoherent during the latter days of his presidency.

Or so they’d have you believe. In fact, Biden-friendly media were in active concealment mode right up until the point where their preferred candidate’s diminished condition could no longer be denied.

Interestingly, their testimonials about Biden’s ageless brilliance were even more gushing than those offered by Biden’s own staff. “He’s far beyond cogent. In fact, he’s better than he’s ever been,” MSNBC host Joe Scarborough declared in March last year.

“Start your tape right now because I’m about to tell you the truth,” Scarborough went on. “And f--k 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. … If it weren’t the truth, I wouldn’t say it.”

The truth emerged three months later, when Biden – sadly diagnosed this week with cancer that has reached his bones – vegged out during that fateful debate.

American political journalists like to imagine themselves as the proud inheritors of the Watergate tradition. You know, exposing governmental wrongdoing, speaking truth to power, revealing all the facts. The whole Woodward-Bernstein trip.

But what they did with Biden was the reverse of revelatory. It was the opposite of Watergate. It was Waterfake, or maybe Gaterwart.

They hid the truth. They lied on behalf of authority. And they attacked people who were honest and accurate about Biden’s condition, such as when CNN presenter Jake Tapper ripped into Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara for suggesting in 2020 that Biden wasn’t all there.

Tapper did so by using a favoured Biden-ally tactic. He invoked the Sacred Biden Stutter, an alleged handicap that Biden himself claimed to have overcome in childhood – but which his defenders decades later deployed to explain everything from their man’s forgetfulness to his poor choice of words.

“How do you think it makes little kids with stutters feel when they see you make a comment like that?” Tapper asked.

“First and foremost, I had no idea that Joe Biden ever suffered from a stutter,” Lara Trump replied. “I think what we see onstage with Joe Biden, Jake, is very clearly a cognitive decline.”

She was right. Tapper, the Biden excuse-maker, was wrong. Yet that hasn’t stopped this ridiculous figure from releasing a new book that blames the White House for covering up Biden’s worsening fragility.

The left-wing press refused to acknowledge Biden’s decline until it was too late. Picture: Saul LOEB / AFP

“The White House was lying not only to the press, not only to the public, but they were lying to members of their own cabinet,” Tapper said this month. “They were lying to White House staffers. They were lying to Democratic members of congress, to donors, about how bad things had gotten.”

Tapper and his media mates evidently need to be told about obvious facts before those facts become true. The rest of us were alert years earlier to Biden’s situation. We’d seen all the clips. Watched all the physical tumbles. Cringed at every so-called “gaffe”.

That’s why we weren’t surprised at all by that debate debacle – unlike the leftist press, now rewriting history to deflect guilt and shame. For example, here’s The Guardian on Sunday: “Biden’s doddering debate performance against Trump on 27 June 2024 was the moment the grand deception was exposed.”

No. Wrong. Exposed years earlier.

And here’s why all of this matters, even as the previous president’s era fades. The same media that lied to you for years about Biden’s fractured mind is still talking to you now. Still giving their verdict on the White House. Still demanding your trust.

Still lying.