Since the disastrous special counsel report on President Joe Biden and his subsequent impromptu press conference on Thursday, left-wing journalists have been floundering to find a leg to stand on in their defense of the president.
For the past eight years, liberal journalists and pundits have taken every opportunity to criticize former President Donald Trump’s speech and conjure questions about the 45th president’s possible mental decline. Popular social media posts and articles featured amateur analysts picking apart the occasional “word salad” from Trump. Conservatives, independents and populists have done the same with Biden—never failing to point out blunders such as Biden’s looking for a deceased Indiana congresswoman in the crowd at an event, mixing up the names of dead European leaders he supposedly “spoke with recently,” or instances where the president appeared physically lost on stage.
Following the investigation into Biden’s handling and retention of classified documents by special counsel Robert Hur, Hur announced that he had concluded Biden had knowingly mishandled the documents, but wouldn’t be recommended for prosecution. Hur claimed that Biden would be seen by jurors as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
According to Hur’s report, Biden could not remember if he was vice president of the United States in 2009 and couldn’t guess, within several years, when his son, Beau, died. The younger Biden died of brain cancer in 2015.
Just hours after Hur’s report dropped and a substantial media firestorm ensued, the White House announced that the president would address the nation at 7:45 p.m. Eastern Time. Fifteen minutes later, the president hosted what can only be described as the most chaotic press conference ever held by a president.
The president confused Mexico with Egypt, shouted at reporters, and after lambasting Hur for mentioning his having forgotten the year his son died, he trailed off attempting to remember where the rosary that he carries for his son came from or what it stands for.
What followed has unequivocally been the most intense public relations nightmare liberals have faced in an election year. Liberals from New York Times writers to left-wing social media pundits began panicking openly. “When”—not “if”—became the term used to describe replacing Biden on the Democratic presidential ballot.
Judd Legum from Popular Information on Substack described Trump as “overweight, opposed to exercise, and prone to delusional thinking” last September. He then asked why Trump’s “age, health and mental fitness is not an issue” for voters.
Fast-forward exactly five months, and Legum has changed his tune. He now claims in a thread of tweets that Hur isn’t a “doctor,” and therefore his opinion on such issues as mental stability doesn’t matter. Funny how that changed.
In 2019, The New York Times ran an op-ed titled “Trump is Mentally Unfit, No Exam Needed,” but following Biden’s debacle, it published a scathing article criticizing anyone who would cast accusations of dementia without “close medical assessment,” titled “Memory Loss Requires Careful Diagnosis, Scientists Say.”
Greg Sargent of The New Republic called any criticism of Biden’s memory by a news organization “actively rewarding Hur’s bad faith,” whereas in 2018 he was quick to publish an article, “This new report on Trump’s state of mind should alarm you.” The report was a news piece covering Trump’s statements on special counsel Robert Mueller’s “Russian collusion” investigation from The New York Times.
Joe Hagan of Vanity Fair noted in September that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “communication style” in press interviews was “hyperbolic” and had “a certain undisciplined (and paranoid) style.”
But on Feb. 8, he was quick to praise Biden’s undisciplined arguments with the press as “sharp” and “appropriately combative” with reporters “who asked dumb questions.”
White House staff and allies are also struggling to unify in an explanation for Biden’s memory catastrophe.
Ian Sams, the White House spokesman for oversight and investigations, called the descriptions of Biden’s memory “inaccurate, gratuitous and wrong.”
Ben LaBolt, the White House communications director, claimed that the president couldn’t remember things during the interview with Hur because the president’s “interview began the day after the October 7 attacks on Israel.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre at a press conference Monday claimed she has known Biden for a decade and that he continues to be “sharp” and “on top of things.”
According to Paul Sperry of Real Clear Investigations, White House physician Kevin O’Connor “said he will not advise Biden undergo a neurological exam or cognitive test as part of his belated Feb. 16 ‘annual’ physical. O’Connor doesn’t believe it’s necessary, despite egregious memory lapses observed by special counsel Rob Hur.”
Business Insider’s Bryan MetzgerWhile many on the Left are counting on this not having a major impact on the 2024 election, as Business Insider’s Bryan Metzger claims, Biden’s memory train wreck isn’t going to help tilt the current abysmal polls in the president’s favor. With a 37% approval rating even before the Hur report and subsequent press nightmare, this isn’t the time for Democrats to be glib—and to their Republican opponents’ delight, the discordant liberal media and pundit class can only make it worse.
With a 37% approval rating even before the Hur report and subsequent press nightmare, this isn’t the time for Democrats to be glib—and to their Republican opponents’ delight, the discordant liberal media and pundit class can only make it worse.
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