The White House Misled Voters About Biden's Mental Health ...

So did journalists ...

Editor’s Note: There’s still much we don’t know about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump — and speculation at this point may lead to conclusions that turn out to be off-base. But even at this point, I think it’s safe to say that words matter — and that angry rhetoric might have contributed to what we witnessed on Saturday. What we don’t know, is how the two presidential campaigns will evolve — or if anything will change at all. The column below was written before the attempt on Donald Trump’s life. We’ll have time this week to comment on the assassination attempt. I believe today is not that time.

—Bernie Goldberg

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The White House press corps is angry. We’ve been duped, misled and lied to, they’re saying. All the president’s men and women deliberately kept Mr. Biden’s condition from journalists and from the American people — knowing if they told the truth he’d have a tough time winning re-election. But blaming Joe Biden and his team for keeping voters in the dark, while true enough, won’t get journalists off the hook for the role they played.

“After Biden’s lackluster [debate] performance, some are questioning whether the White House press corps dropped the ball on fully covering Biden’s limitations,” according to a story on CNN’s website. “Several [anonymous] White House reporters told CNN that the coverage of Biden’s age and his mental stamina should have pushed harder. They cited several difficulties in doing so before the debate – from the obvious political motivations of sources who either want to protect Biden’s image or project a certain image, to the blowback from pursuing such reports, especially from the White House and Democrats. Still, some reporters said the press corps could have done a better job covering Biden’s physical and mental state.”

Journalists deserve no credit for stating the obvious. Of course, they should have done a better job covering Biden’s physical and mental state. They’re doing it now — now, that they can no longer simply ignore the obvious — but “better late than never” is an awfully low bar.

In February, Robert Hur, the special prosecutor, wrote a report and said Biden was a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

You might think that would have touched off some curiosity by supposedly impartial journalists. But since Biden’s age and mental acuity were conservative talking points, that, according to CNN, “may have inadvertently turned off any serious investigation.”

Let that sink in. Because Republicans thought Biden’s mental health was a legitimate issue, that may have “turned off any serious investigation” — by supposedly honest journalists. Really? 

“I think the press, most of the White House press, did suffer from a bit of lack of curiosity,” one of the White House reporters told CNN.

So why did journalists show so little curiosity, about President Biden’s fitness for office? “Some Washington reporters have privately griped that Biden got a bit of a free pass because Trump was so aberrant and dishonest,” according to Brian Stelter in Vox.

So journalists can’t walk and chew gum at the same time? They can’t report on Joe Biden’s unfitness for office because Trump is also unfit. And they wonder why Americans don’t believe just about anything they say.

“Witness the Wall Street Journal’s prescient story in early June — ‘Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping’ — which was widely criticized for leaning too heavily on Republican sources with partisan agendas. The Biden press shop went into attack mode and the Journal reporters felt rather lonely as media commentators derided the story,” Stelter writes.

When President Biden turned down the traditional Super Bowl interview, that should have produced more interest from the press than it did.

When video clips appeared to show him to be lost or confused, that should have produced journalistic curiosity.

When the White House refused to put out the audio version of Biden’s interview with Robert Hur, that should have set off some alarm bells.

“Did we miss some chances to connect some dots? I think that’s a fair question,” a veteran correspondent told Stelter. 

These guys are so clueless that they make Captain Obvious look like Sherlock Holmes.

Even now, there are defenders of the press who say that while journalists failed to connect those dots, it wasn’t because they were covering for Joe Biden.

In a recent Off the Cuff, I asked what I think is an obvious question:

“Why did so many liberal journalists show far more interest, way more curiosity, over that fake story about Donald Trump and Russian collusion, than they showed for the very real story about Joe Biden’s mental fragility? Because the Russian hoax story hurt Donald Trump and the Biden mental fragility story would help Donald Trump.”

They’ll never admit it, they like to think (or at least say) they play fair and that their own political biases don’t influence their coverage of important stories. But that’s hard to believe — especially when millions of ordinary Americans noticed that Joe Biden was faltering. But somehow we’re supposed to buy into the charade that professional journalists either didn’t notice or didn’t think the story was important enough to pursue?

Ted Cruz, the GOP senator from Texas, weighed in on the subject with this tweet:

“There are only two options: (1) the Dems & their media shills were so clueless that they had no idea that Biden is mentally incompetent, or (2) they KNEW & they deliberately LIED about it. Both are damning. I vote #2.”

So do I.

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On tomorrow’s brand new episode of The Daly Express, John Daly talks to Robert H. Silbering, formerly of the New York City District Attorney’s office, who was once considered America’s top drug prosecutor. They’ll cover the growing drug problem in our country, cameras in the courtroom, what really goes on in the D.A.’s office, and more.

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