By Harry Storm
The post-debate scrutiny of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline isn’t a return to journalism, it’s the latest move in the media’s continuing Trump obsession
One televised debate. That’s all it took for the viewing public to learn that U.S. President Joe Biden is cognitively impaired. The debate between Biden and former president Donald Trump forced media outlets in the United States to publicly acknowledge Biden’s cognitive woes, which until then they had – in lockstep with the administration and the most of the Democratic party –vigorously covered up, either by ignoring the issue or denying its existence.
Since Biden’s disastrous debate performance, the media’s newfound scrutiny of his mental state has led to some handwringing about how the mainstream media “missed” the story in the first place. But does that mean that the attention finally being given to Biden’s cognitive issues heralds a rediscovery of journalistic principles and standards, such as accuracy, fairness, and striving for objectivity? Does it mean journalists will stop being overtly biased woke advocates or social justice activists?
Not a chance, I’m afraid. The media’s apparent turnaround on Biden has nothing to do with a “return to journalism” and everything to do with its continuing obsession with Donald Trump. After all, there are countless examples of Biden’s declining cognition over the past few years, with nary a peep from mainstream media outlets.
Here are just a few: At a September 2022 meeting, Biden called out for congresswoman Jackie Walorski (R-Ind); unfortunately, she had died in a car accident in August. In April 2024, while making a speech and reading from a teleprompter, he inadvertently read “pause” – an instruction from his staff – out loud.
More recently, the president appeared to freeze during a Juneteeth celebration. A week later he struggled to name his own Secretary of Homeland Security (Alejandro Mayorkas, who has recently been the target of Republicans over his handling – or non-handling – of the crisis at the Mexican border). At the time, videos of these gaffes, mainly by conservative media, were ridiculed and written off as “cheap fakes” by Democrats and many in the media.
But since the Trump-Biden debate, the media has seemingly gone from skeptical to utterly convinced that the old man has got to go. Indeed, some of the turnarounds have been laughable. As recently as mid-March, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Biden sycophant Joe Scarborough said Biden was “better than he’s ever been, intellectually, analytically … this version of Biden is the best Biden ever… if it weren’t the truth, I wouldn’t say it.”
After the debate, however, Scarborough was singing a very different tune. “He spent much of the night with his mouth agape and his eyes darting back and forth. He couldn’t fact-check anything Donald Trump said. He missed one layup after another after another,” Scarborough said, adding that “now is the last chance for Democrats to decide whether this man we’ve known and loved for a very long time is up to the task of running for president of the United States.” (Scarborough has since backtracked somewhat, saying that “such a historic decision should not be made in haste.”)
The New York Times, which only a week earlier had referred to the video clips of Biden’s cognitive decline as “cheap fakes,” called for Biden to resign the morning after the debate. In another article about what it called Biden’s “lapses,” the NYT actually referenced the same clips it had suggested were cheap fakes just a few days earlier.
So why the sudden turnaround? Has the media suddenly realized in some sort of thunderclap that since 2016 they had abdicated journalism to become advocates and activists? Have mainstream journalists rediscovered their professionalism?
Hardly.
No, what happened was that after Biden’s disastrous performance in the debate, which made his mental infirmities clear for all to see, it became obvious that voters would not choose this shell of a man to run the country for 4 more years, even if the alternative was the dreaded Trump.
This was obvious long before the debate to some, even in the Democratic party, but until the debate, so much of the public was still in the dark that hope persisted at media outlets and among journalists hostile to Trump that Biden could still prevail.
This hope was shattered when a national viewing audience saw what the media had previously refused to report and what Biden and Democratic party operatives – with few exceptions, notably longtime Democratic election strategist James Carville – had tried to carefully hide from the public.
Panic set in within the Democratic party and among journalists at all major media outlets. And whereas party unity and, to some degree, loyalty to Biden muted many, but not all, calls from Democrats, media outlets were less restrained, including those formerly in lockstep with the Biden administration, but which are now calling on the president to step down, citing infirmity.
So don’t believe any malarkey about a return to journalistic standards. In the end, this is all about defeating Trump. Regardless of whether or not the Democrats select a new candidate to replace Biden, I’ve little doubt that the current media scrutiny of Biden will be short-lived, the non-stop Trump-bashing will continue unabated, and we’ll have to wait a very long time, if ever, for media organizations to return to some semblance of journalistic integrity.
In the wake of the failed Trump assassination attempt and the boost in popularity for him because of his defiant reaction, it is already being postulated by some in the Democratic party that Trump is now a shoo-in for the presidency, and therefore Biden should stay in the race and take the fall, rather than a potential hopeful for 2028.
Should the Democratic party adopt this position, expect the Trump-deranged media to do another 180 and pooh-pooh Biden’s cognitive woes in the desperate hope that somehow, he can prevent Trump from re-assuming the presidency. Expect the same hysterical – and in many instances, fictional – stories attacking Trump while treating Biden with kid gloves.
In other words, for most media outlets, it’s still all about getting Trump, just as it has been since 2016. It may be hard to believe that one rather simple-minded obsession has done so much to fatally undermine the principles of a once proud craft, but that’s where we are.
