The mainstream media’s long-running efforts to bury questions about President Joe Biden’s mental state suffered a devastating blow after his debate with former President Donald Trump.
Voters have long worried Biden’s mental health isn’t good enough to be president, and Republicans have repeatedly questioned his cognitive abilities, including during the 2020 campaign. GaffeDespite Americans’ concerns, traditional media has consistently Disregarded They deny their legitimacy, criticize those who express it, and the story of incompetence is Russia. (RELATED: Bidenworld “MAGA guy” attack on Robert Hur makes no sense, records show)
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Joe Scarborough, March:
“I’m telling you the truth. If you can’t accept the truth then damn it. This version of Biden is the best Biden ever.” pic.twitter.com/RWij2c4Zfg— Philip Reichert (@PhilipReichert) June 28, 2024
CNN Published An August 2021 analysis concluded that concerns about Biden’s cognitive abilities were largely “meritless.” The analysis suggested that it was primarily Republicans who were driving the claims that Biden’s abilities were declining.
“This is awful, lowest-common-denominator politics that alienates people from public life,” said former CNN executive editor Chris Cillizza. “If Republicans have any evidence of Biden’s decline, they should make it public. If they don’t, they should stop what they’re doing right now.”
The New York Times Published “I have no interest in the vile Sleepy Joe myth being peddled by the right, but if these are symptoms of dementia, I don’t know what to call my own moments of forgetfulness, when words or keys or hair scrunchies periodically slip away from me,” wrote a November 2020 opinion piece titled “Stop Worrying about Biden’s Age — We Need His Wisdom Now.”
In addition, The Hill Published A November 2019 article suggested that Biden’s frequent gaffes were due to a stutter he had suffered from since childhood, rather than cognitive decline.
“While some have questioned Biden’s mental state, suggesting the possibility of age-related cognitive decline (he just turned 77), it’s important to consider the possibility that many of these lapses may have been due to a lifelong struggle with a speech impediment,” The Hill said.
Special Counsel Robert Hur said, report In February, the court concluded that Biden had mismanaged classified documents, but chose not to pursue charges against the president, arguing that they would be unlikely to secure a conviction because jurors would likely perceive him as a “caring, well-meaning old man with a bad memory.” The corporate media defended Biden’s clarity. and Attacked After the recording of the interview was made public and revealed memory lapses, including appearing to forget when his term as vice president began and ended and the date his son Bo died, Heo was accused of partisanship and lies.
For example, The New York Times report “Biden appeared calm for much of the time,” The Washington Post said, “and spoke at length about a number of issues.” I got it. “Biden is not as absent-minded as Heo makes him out to be.”
NBC News Admitted While criticizing Biden for his “memory lapses” during the interview, the headline highlighted the “detailed exchanges” that took place.
Several videos released in June of Biden drew attention, highlighting the 81-year-old president’s declining physical condition and increasing gaffes, such as freezing and walking away. A month before the debate, the White House called the questionable videos of Biden “cheap fakes,” and the media picked up on that argument.
“‘Cheapfake’ Biden video captivates right-wing media but is deeply misleading,” The Washington Post reported on June 14. read.
“The use of these clips is a particularly harmful example of manipulated video because it is intended to create a false narrative that does not reflect actual events,” the outlet argued, saying the editing style was misleading. Published On June 21, an article titled “How Misleading Video Tracks Biden as He Fights Age Allegations” was published, which similarly claimed that the trimming of the video made it misleading.
The recent panic over Biden’s age and health has prompted calls from prominent columnists and Democratic Party leaders for the president to withdraw from the race. Five major media outlets, including The New York Times, have called on Biden to withdraw, and two have urged him to at least consider it, The Hill reported. report on sunday.
“There has been a lot of speculation online about what news organizations have done or haven’t done regarding reporting on the president’s age,” New York Times editor-in-chief Joe Kahn said in a Wednesday memo to The Times’ reporters, which the paper shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “What I’ve seen, and what readers have experienced from our team, has been solid, fact-based reporting on this issue, beginning with chronicling Biden’s age-related challenges in multiple industry-leading articles several years ago. We have consistently covered the topic, always with nuance and context, through today’s outstanding reporting.”
Some White House reporters said they should have been more thorough in reporting on Biden’s abilities. Said CNN reported the story anonymously on Tuesday, with a reporter telling the outlet that it had made a mistake by not investigating further after Heo’s report.
“Right-wing media has been calling him demented since day one, which wasn’t true,” the reporter told CNN. “Every time we reported on his age, we were actually solidifying and giving credibility to the bad actors in some way.”
Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Said “The Biden we have today is intellectually and analytically the best Biden we’ve ever had. Nobody comes close, and I’ve known him for years… I wouldn’t say that if it weren’t true,” he said in March.
Scarborough asked after Friday’s debate whether Biden should drop out of the race, raising concerns about his ability to run the country and beat Trump.
The Washington Post, NBC and The Hill did not respond to requests for comment from the DCNF.
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