The political and media establishment that lied to you about President Joe Biden will now also lie to you about new Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
When special counsel Robert Hur decided in February not to indict Biden over technically illegal mishandling of classified documents, in part because potential jurors would be reluctant to convict an “elderly man with a poor memory whose capacities have declined with age,” the White House reaction was swift and severe.
“They don’t know what they’re talking about,” the president ranted to reporters that evening. “My memory’s fine” (sadly not good enough to stop Biden, in the same brief press conference, from confusing the Egyptian and Mexican presidents and falsely accusing Heo of mentioning the death of his son Bo during questioning).
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre denounced Heo’s assessment of the president’s memory the next day, calling it “baseless,” “unacceptable” and “out of touch with reality.”
But the administration’s most blunt attack on the Justice Department’s messengers, and what by July had become an undeniable message that forced Biden to withdraw from the presidential race, came from Harris.
“The way in which the report portrayed the President’s behavior is inconsistent with the facts. [is] It’s clearly politically motivated.” Harris argued. “We should expect to see a higher level of integrity than what we saw,” he said at a community forum the day after Hoare’s report.
We Americans have come to expect, through soul-numbing experience, only a paltry level of integrity from our elected officials, especially as they climb higher and higher in the well-oiled ranks of political power. What makes Harris’ brazen February behavior even more untenable this fall is the realization that individuals and groups supposedly seeking the truth will enthusiastically support attacks on the veracity of the Democratic candidate, just as they embarrassed themselves by doing the same to their boss.
Before we get swamped by subsequent events (including the July assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump), it’s important to remember that Hoare’s report didn’t exactly arrive in a cognitive vacuum: Just days earlier, Biden had confused French President Emmanuel Macron with the now-deceased François Mitterrand (after initially saying that Mitterrand was from Germany), attributed comments by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the also-deceased Helmut Kohl, and failed to mention the then-trending name “Hamas.”
Watchdog groups had already documented Biden’s historical aversion to public questioning at this point: He had held just 32 news conferences (mostly with foreign leaders) in his first three years in office, according to figures from the University of California, Santa Barbara. The American President ProjectTrump had 52, Barack Obama 66, George W. Bush 65 and Bill Clinton 111. Biden gave just 74 interviews during that time, many of them with celebrities or late-night comedians, compared with Trump’s 273. He became the first president this century to discontinue the White House tradition of holding an end-of-year news conference, set to begin in 2023. do not have He declined to appear at the site of the attacks on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and even turned down the traditional softball interview at the Super Bowl this year.
The few unscripted exchanges permitted by Biden’s entourage were fraught with danger. January 2022 press conferenceThe president appeared to minimize the possibility of a strong Western response if Russia made a “small-scale incursion” into Ukraine. After that incident, Jill Biden reportedly reprimanded White House staff and helped put in place a series of security measures: personnel surrounding the president on his short walks to and from Marine One, monitors standing by to instantly pull him out of unscheduled conversations (including one staff member dressed as the Easter Bunny at the 2022 White House Easter Egg Roll), and the ever-present First Lady, ready to hold her husband’s arm tightly or signal from the audience to shorten his answers with hand signals.
November 2023 Report of The New York Times An investigation into the Biden campaign’s careful precautions reveals the striking and reprehensible name that campaign staff gave to the operation: “Popping“
All of this has been widely documented as of February 2024. rearUnaware that in the 20 weeks between the Hoare report and Biden’s terrible head-over-heels display in the Trump debate, a majority of Biden’s supporters believed he was too old to be president, Biden’s apologists continued to attack anyone who believed what they saw with their own eyes rather than the establishment’s lies for months after the Hoare report.
“About the rumors of his mental breakdown.” Tweeted The statements made by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter John Harwood in March were “complete nonsense.” Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor at the City University of New York, said in March. The New York Times Even the polling on Biden’s health as it relates to his age is inadequate. Jarvis wrote in the thread, “The very fact that this question was asked is evidence of poll bias, i.e. agenda. Who made age an ‘issue’? The credulous Times has fallen prey to right-wing projection. This is not journalism. It’s disgraceful.”
when of The Wall Street Journal In early June, 45 documents, 3,000 words article Under the headline “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Decline,” Biden’s favorite news show, MSNBC Morning JoeThe segment went into overdrive when host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, called it “shocking,” “false and biased reporting,” and a “Trump attack piece.” (In March, Scarborough testified that his recent personal experience had led him to believe Biden was “more intelligent than ever.”)
The White House’s rebuttal to criticism of Biden’s age ahead of the June 27 presidential debate was so successful that a handful of reputable media outletsThe Washington Post, The New York Times, Associated Press, CNNthe Poynter Institute and others essentially repeated Jean-Pierre’s accusation that a recently widely shared video clip of the president staggering around in public and sporting a confused expression was nothing more than a deceptively edited “cheap fake” rather than a significant evidentiary document.
The debate, and the three weeks of presidential stumbling that followed before Biden withdrew from the 2024 race, brought an abrupt end to a years-long, shameless gaslighting campaign, but it will do little to slow the propaganda machine.
The liars and hacks mentioned above will not suffer any career setbacks after deceiving the American people. Their animosity toward Trump and their campaign to portray him as an existential threat to the survival of our constitutional republic will bind all wounds and erase all short-term memories. Meanwhile, Trump’s own litany of lies, especially about the integrity of the 2020 election, will also taint the political atmosphere and push the closely watched presidential race into yet another downward spiral of hyperbolic nonsense.
It took little time for politicians to apply old bad habits to the new realities of 2024. Journalists who described Harris as Biden’s overzealous “border officer” in 2021 published fact checks accusing Republicans of doing the same thing now. The New York Times Negative interpretations of Harris’ record, such as her “diversity hiring,” were labeled “fake information.” Biden, a legendary storyteller, said in his exit speech, “When you elected me for this office, I promised you that I would always be honest with you and tell you the truth.”
But it was the controlling first lady who may have been the most imperious of all: “To those who never wavered, those who refused to doubt, those who always believed,” Jill Biden tweeted after Joe’s speech, “my heart is full of gratitude.”
Translation: Thanks, fools. See you at the next scam.
