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There are media bombshells and then there is The Wall Street Journal report that Joe Biden is so mentally diminished that aides have isolated him to hide his decline from the public and even key members of his administration.
Cabinet secretaries and congressional leaders find it next-to-impossible to get in-person meetings with the president, and full cabinet gatherings are rare.
As the years have passed, phone calls with Biden grew increasingly unusual, with most communications made through intermediaries.
“There were limits over who Biden spoke with, limits on what they said to him and limits around the sources of information he consumed,” a team of Journal reporters wrote.
Truth be told, this is one of those situations where something is simultaneously shocking but not surprising.
Anyone paying even cursory attention knows Biden’s not all there and hasn’t been for years.
All along, his rare public appearances were usually punctuated by stumbles, gibberish and a dazed, confused look.
To hide his infirmities, every move and word were scripted, which explains why he gave far fewer interviews and press conferences than his predecessors.
Stick to script, or else
When he did appear in public, he usually carried cheat sheets with stage directions and talking points.
He sometimes revealed the short leash by saying “I’ll get in trouble” by answering questions.
Aides also had to retract some wild statements he made, including one where he suggested regime change was US policy in Russia.
Last June, weeks after the Journal reported that people who had seen Biden said he was slipping, the whole world saw what a mess he was in the disastrous debate with Donald Trump.
The president had trouble forming sentences and several times trailed off into incoherence.
That performance led to his withdrawal from the presidential campaign, but White House aides have continued to insist he is fine and able to carry out his presidential duties.
They stuck to that story again last week.
They are lying and everybody in Washington has to know it, including all the media.
So why hasn’t the rest of the press corps, especially the outlets with scores of reporters and editors in the capital, ever pursued this critical story?
It was a scoop waiting to be told, and not just for domestic audiences.
Because America’s commander-in-chief is considered to be the leader of the free world, a president who is unable to carry out his duties is a global danger.
That prospect is especially acute now, with wars in Europe and the Mideast, and with a growing sense that World War III could be just around the corner.
Few people believe it’s a coincidence that the current crises are happening on Biden’s watch.
So why has his cognitive decline not gotten the wide scrutiny it deserved?
And why is there no reporting even now about who is actually running the government?
The answers to both questions are as obvious as they are infuriating: The legacy-media outlets and their activist offshoots don’t want the American people to know the truth.
They are not covering the White House.
They are covering up for the White House.
Democrats with press passes–that’s what they are.
And they put their partisan allegiance ahead of their professional responsibility and their country.
By not even trying to pierce the fog spun by Biden’s enablers, the Washington media became his co-conspirators.
The Oh Puh-leezer Prize
Is there a Pulitzer category for that?
Unfortunately, even calling the media co-conspirators doesn’t fully capture the dirty game they are playing.
To understand the complete picture, it helps to see the refusal to report Biden’s decline as one part of a set of bookends.
The other part is the nasty, distorted coverage of Trump.
There the media have always been full of sound and fury, determined since 2016 to keep him out of the White House.
They failed then, but tortured every word he said and every action he took during his first term.
They pushed for his impeachment and conviction over the “Russia! Russia! Russia!” hoax and other drummed-up scandals.
Their distorted coverage played a major role in the 2020 election.
They weren’t fairly and accurately holding Trump accountable — they were using all their power and tools to swing the election to Biden.
They had a major assist from the FBI and the Big Tech companies, who worked together to keep the public in the dark about Hunter Biden reaping millions by selling connections to his father to foreign businesses and governments.
Recall that 51 former intelligence officers signed the infamous letter saying the damning evidence on Hunter’s laptop had the earmarks of Russian disinformation.
Most of them knew better because the FBI already had authenticated the laptop’s hard drive’s contents, but they, too, were willing to sell their credibility to help defeat Trump.
And with Trump set to enter the Oval Office again, the war against him is already raging.
Fresh off a campaign where they supported the flimsy criminal cases brought by Biden’s Department of Justice and state prosecutors in New York and Georgia, and where they did all they could to push Kamala Harris into the Oval Office, the media coverage of Trump’s second term is shaping up to be as nasty and negative as the first.
Don under microscope
Everything he says and does is viewed through the claim that his motives are selfish or even diabolical.
They preen endlessly about what they claim is his plan for revenge and retribution, describe him as vindictive and warn that he plans an assault on the First Amendment.
A constant thread is the claim to have insights into his mind, as if the media are trained psychiatrists making a diagnosis.
Although public resistance to Trump is not nearly as feverish as it was before his first term and the Dems’ slurs that he is the new Hitler have disappeared, there is no sign that the media intends to cover him more fairly.
In fact, the fear-mongering tone employed against Trump remains remarkable compared towith the soft-glove, see-no-evil coverage of Biden.
The world is in flames, the nation is angrily divided, the failing president and the daffy vice president are in hiding–and yet Trump is the problem.
The distortion reflects prejudice and ignorance.
The far-left orientation of most journalists and their outlets echoes the radical indoctrination dished out in elite colleges.
Editors used to provide a counterweight by having a knowledge of history and by insisting on standards of fairness, but those standards were abandoned soon after Trump entered the 2016 race.
The media landscape now is dominated by leftist advocacy while opposing views, whether conservative or centrist, are considered heresy.
One effect is the lack of interest in Biden’s mental decline and in learning who is filling the vacuum in the Oval Office.
Another effect is the requirement to hate Trump and his supporters.
So here we go again because many people infected with both traits masquerade as journalists.