Taking questions from reporters at the White House on Wednesday, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre once again attributed President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance to jet lag from travel and a cold.
“His schedule was very demanding and he had to travel from Italy all the way to the West Coast,” Jean-Pierre said. “I think this will have an impact on anyone, whether you’re 20 or 80.”
Most people don’t travel in the relative comfort of the President of the United States—there’s a bed on Air Force One, after all—but travel can certainly be exhausting. But let’s be clear first: this debate took place exactly 12 days after Biden returned from his business trip. Furthermore, the fact is America president Such a difficult job is why voters are so worried about Biden’s advanced age.
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To their credit, reporters in the room shrugged off Jean-Pierre’s attempts to turn the tables and urged her to address growing public concerns about Biden’s fitness for public office. Several elected Democrats and prominent spokespersons for the party, including Julian Castro and Tim Ryan, have called on Biden to withdraw. “The Atlantic Monthly”, “Chicago Tribune”, “New York Times”, Several of its columnists thought he should drop out of the race. On top of that, support for Biden is declining: 74% of voters now say he is too old to be president, while former President Donald Trump has significantly widened his lead. Polls now show Vice President Kamala Harris favoring Trump over Biden by two percentage points, although Trump still leads her.
But why is it needed so long Will the mainstream media continue to pursue this investigation even as evidence of Biden’s cognitive decline becomes increasingly clear? Even before this debate, the American people had been highly concerned about the president’s ability to be re-elected. Polls dating back to February have found serious misgivings among a majority of Democrats and three-quarters of voters.
The White House doesn’t think that’s a problem. The Biden team lashed out at anyone who cast doubt on Biden’s health, including special counsel Robert Hur, who described him as an “old man with a bad memory,” giving the president’s defenders a stroke. . Jean-Pierre has repeatedly claimed that the uncomfortable video of Biden awkwardly walking away was misleading but “rigged.” While “cheap fake” became the go-to term for the videos in question, Jean-Pierre went further – she said the videos were “deepfakes,” meaning they had been significantly altered on a digital level.
“Instead of talking about the president’s performance in office — I mean his legislative wins, what he’s done for the American people across the country — what we’re seeing are these deepfakes, these manipulated videos, ” she said on June 17. “Again, this was done out of spite.
The dishonest actor here is Jean-Pierre, although that’s perhaps to be expected given her role. The bigger question is why the mainstream media fell for it and enabled it.
Multiple mainstream news organizations have fully adopted the White House talking points about cheap fakes. Washington post Reports say Republicans are weaponizing Biden’s “deceptively edited videos.” The Poynter Institute echoed the sentiment. Same goes for AP, CNN, of course. New York Times. it is Republicans pounce, And then there are some.
Earlier New York Times Executive editor Jill Abramson suspects the media’s collective dislike of Trump is causing the White House press corps to shirk responsibility in this regard.
“I do think if enough journalists push for it, this story is worth covering,” she told traffic light. “I’m concerned that too many reporters didn’t try to cover the story because they didn’t want to be accused of helping elect Donald Trump.”
If this is the motive—or even a subtle bias influencing coverage—it turns out to be profoundly counterproductive, even when viewed through the lens of: help Biden. The American people suddenly realized that the president was compromised by his age. There are currently questions about whether Biden should be president now, let alone whether he could be president at all four more years.
No doubt the White House wants to keep this fact under wraps until Biden safely crosses the finish line in November. But media organizations’ inadvertent participation in this farce not only greatly reduced the likelihood of a subsequent Democratic administration, but also seriously damaged their own integrity.
Amber Duke joins me to discuss Biden’s poor debate performance and media reaction, Tulsi Gabbard’s thoughts on the drafting of women, and the Supreme Court’s Trump immunity case decision.
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