The Biggest Media Story of Biden’s Presidency

They failed to cover the cognitive decline of the commander in chief until it served them to do so

As President Joe Biden prepares to leave office, no story about the media during his time in office should stand out in the history books as sharply as the corporate press’s unwillingness to cover Biden’s cognitive decline.

Few things make the level of egregiousness more clear than the way the media’s tone changed as soon as Biden was no longer a presumed useful tool against President-elect Donald Trump.

After months covering for Biden, the June 27th Presidential Debate made clear that Biden was an electoral liability. Not only was he unlikely to take down Trump, Biden was an albatross, a walking time bomb, with the next confidence-rattling verbal flub lurking at every speech and public appearance.

And so the press turned on Biden.

I’m breaking from my usual format to highlight how the tone shifted for a number of outlets, with some moments-in-time included throughout.

You want to know why confidence in the media is at an all-time low? Look at these side by sides.

The Coverage: What the media had to say about Biden’s cognitive well-being turned on a dime after the debate in late June.

The Washington Post explained in a “Fact Checker” piece how Republicans were “enraptured” by “cheap fake” videos, “misleading” viewers to “reinforce stereotypes” about Biden. The reality, the outlet claimed, was that this was all misinformation, and that part of the reason we could be confident that there was nothing amiss was because (real quote) “Biden…has often said he doesn’t dance.” That was June 15.

Three weeks later, after one disastrous debate, the Post’s tone had changed. They published a headline, “Biden’s aging is seen as accelerating; lapses described as more common.” according to “aides, foreign officials [!], members of Congress, and donors.” Those close to him said that “Biden has slowed considerably over the last several months.”

Where was the Post, and the rest of the media, for those “several months”? Why weren’t the media learning and reporting that “people were worried” about Biden at an international summit the week before?

I want to stay with the Post here because of just how extensive their egregious coverage was. In another article published within the above window of Biden’s visible decline, the Post did a deep dive on what they called “deceptively edited videos,” that had allegedly been weaponized against the president.

These videos — most of which showed the type of decline the Post would later report on — didn’t reveal a president whose functions were clearly escaping him, to hear the Post tell it, but evidence that the “politics of misinformation and conspiracy theories do not stop at the water’s edge.”

This sentiment was part of a long pattern from the Post. After a damning report from special counsel Robert Hur about Biden’s cognitive decline back in February, the Post ran an explainer about how one’s memory changes as they age, with the subtitle including not just Biden but, for no apparent reason, Trump, too. Biden’s lapses were just like anyone else who has mixed up a name.

A week later — for good measure, I suppose — the Post was up with an “analysis” piece titled, “Which came first, the Biden age concerns or the coverage of them?” Safe to say it was the former!

But this failure wasn’t unique to the Post. The New York Times committed many of the same journalistic sins.

In a story a week before the debate, NYT, in a piece titled, “How Misleading Videos Are Trailing Biden as He Battles Age Doubts,” the Times lamented the “distorted, online version” of the president, created by “often misleading videos” pushed by Republicans.

A week — one week! — later, but crucially following Biden’s disastrous debate, the Times reported precisely the type of Biden depicted in the videos: one who “increasingly appeared confused or listless, or would lose the thread of conversation” and that he had displayed this behavior for “the last few months or so.”

Months. ‘Or so’!

Again, where was the NY Times for these “months” as the leader of the free world’s cognitive state deteriorated in the eyes of those around him?

Like with the Post, the answer is mostly attempting to rebut concerns about Biden’s age, memory, and cognitive ability.

In a piece following the Hur report about Biden’s potential competency to stand trail over mishandling documents, the Times was out with a “scientists say” piece disputing Hur. His conclusions, the Times claimed, “were not based on science.” Forgetting these things — when a loved one had died, when a person stops being vice president (?) — was normal. Biden was still rattled from Hamas’s attack “two days earlier” than the interview. Totally normal stuff. Nothing to see here.

A few months prior, the Times ran a piece that would’ve made Kim Jong Un blush, detailing Biden’s strength and wherewithal, someone who “often outlasts younger colleagues” and who has “exhibited striking stamina.”

I wish I made the below headline up. It’s real. Still online, link is here: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/08/books/review/joe-biden-age-style.html.

The rest of the media has done this same shift on Biden, with precisely zero recognition of how they blew the story up until it was no longer deniable. Here’s CNN:

I’m begging, pleading with anyone at CNN to look at these two headlines and the dates each was published and tell me, with a straight face, that this was just a simple misunderstanding. (The pictures really tell the story.)

I would like to solve the riddle, AP.

Or this one from AP, which I think really captures the media shift quite perfectly.

Maybe seeing should have been believing? Maybe refusing to believe what could clearly be seen is…bad? Maybe the reality was right there in front of you?

Perhaps the most jarring before/after comparison, to me anyway, was this about-face from ABC News, mere weeks apart. First, they “fact checked” claims about Biden’s aging, alleging those advancing these claims were using “misleading” evidence. Then, a few weeks later, they raised concerns about Biden’s “troubling” mental issues where “guests…say they had concerns about Biden”…at an event a month prior.

I really hate to beat a dead horse, but why did ABC News write off these concerns about Biden’s “mental state” rather than lift a finger to find out if the guy with the nuclear codes had displayed “troubling” behavior tied to his mental state?

ABC published plenty of similarly politically advantageous pieces — in both directions, before and after Biden’s electoral goose was cooked.

Again, perhaps NBC News should’ve just trusted their lying eyes? Maybe taken all those gaffes for what they were, rather than write them off as unfounded Republican attacks?

This first headline here is from later in this cycle (the Hur report) but NBC News went from saying, in all seriousness, that just because Biden couldn’t remember anything and had all these verbal flubs, this reality “doesn’t affect decision-making or judgment, brain experts say” (the “experts say” always kills me) to using evidence of a verbal flub to suggest something might be amiss. In the subhead!

Where was that concern in the months prior? Why weren’t those issues reporting-worthy when Biden was still the unquestioned candidate against Trump?

The signs were all there, reported by non-corporate outlets (including yours truly). H/t to Becket Adams and Fox News as well.

But, no. The corporate press worked overtime to push a different narrative. You had to figure there would be more receipts.

That the Daily Beast had the gall to run this second headline (“in plain sight”!) three weeks after the prior one is really something.

How — I ask earnestly — can the Guardian not be embarrassed by these two headlines, published three weeks apart?

I know I’ve said this before but, really, the New Republic was once a legitimate outlet. Tragic what’s happened there.

Deadline? I’ve got nothing, man.

And, crucially, the media carried water for Biden when he needed it most, en masse. When Biden’s candidacy started facing serious questions about his cognitive ability, the press were there to play defense for the Democrats.

That “cheap fake” claim from earlier wasn’t unique to the Post. Look at all the other outlets who ran with this White-House-created narrative: The Hill, the New Republic (another one), Reuters, Mother Jones, CBS News (times two), Crooked Media, MSNBC’s Joy Reid (can’t leave her out), and Rolling Stone.

The Takeaway: Left unsaid in this later coverage was the most important detail: they, the press, got this one wrong. The thing worth talking about wasn’t how the GOP was promoting “misinformation” or deceiving audiences to make Biden appear worse than he was. The story was the deterioration of the President of the United States, in real time, as he was months away from standing for re-election.

Bad as that is, there’s another glaring problem with the press’s reflexive incuriosity. Even when the media recognized that the GOP was on to something, the story went nowhere beyond the momentary concerns. Guests at a party were worried. Biden loses his train of thought more often.

The leader of the free world, the guy with the nuclear codes, very clearly couldn’t — and can’t! he is still in office! — function as the Democratic Party establishment, and the White House, claimed. Yet the same press who love to remember their glory in the Watergate saga and their job holding truth to power can’t be bothered to look into it.

The questions are obvious, and surely make the Founders roll in their graves. Who is running the White House? Who is making the most important decisions? If there’s a nuclear warhead heading for an American city in the middle of the night, do they wake him up to decide what to do? This guy?

There are more. Who has been privy to the extent of this decline that the press has only recently reported? How long have they known there is a problem? Who is running the country right now? It very clearly isn’t the man elected to do so.

That the media — the ones who are supposed to hold government to account — aren’t outside the White House shouting these questions, day in and day out, is inconceivable.

That their efforts to hide it no doubt helped get us to this point? I’ll leave it to the reader to describe.