The Media Admits Failure on Biden’s Cognitive Decline, Shifts Blame
Today, CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios Journalist Alex Thompson released their tell-all book about President Biden’s cognitive decline in the White House and the alleged massive coverup. Their book, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again is a bombshell expose that’s quite damning to White House insiders and Democrats of all stripes.
While the book highlights some of the most egregious examples of President Biden’s missteps, the most interesting discussion focuses on why it took so long for the Washington press corps to acknowledge what was plainly obvious to many around the President.
“We were just lied to over and over again,” Tapper said in a Zoom interview just before the book’s release. “If I had learned about any of these stories in 2022, 2023, or 2024, I would have reported them in a second.”
Crucially, Tapper affirmed that the right-wing pundits who regularly lambasted Biden’s conduct were correct from the beginning. “They were right and that should be acknowledged,” he said in the interview. Countless conservative commentators like Fox News’ Peter Doocy regularly questioned Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about Biden’s cognitive state. She and many liberal pundits dismissed this as a conspiracy and even accused Biden’s critics of ageism.
The revelations about President Biden’s cognitive decline have been compounded by the recent announcement that the former President is dealing with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. Former Republican physicians like Congressman Greg Murphy of North Carolina (who is a Urologist) and President Trump’s former physician, Congressman Ronny Jackson of Texas, have both suggested that this form of cancer develops over a long period of time and that this information was hidden from the public.
No matter your political beliefs, the revelations about President Biden’s physical and mental health are gut-wrenching. This is a man who dedicated his entire life to public service as a Senator, Vice President, and President. He deserved better from the people around him and from the public.
These revelations will have disastrous consequences for the media. As Tapper acknowledged, the mainstream media didn’t just ignore or downplay the President’s health – they actively attacked those who tried to bring it to light. The mainstream media, with all its careful research and sourcing, is already struggling to remain competitive with amateur influencers and podcasters in the modern media landscape. This situation only gives the public more reason to be skeptical about the information they receive from traditional news sources. Unfortunately, if the trend in American media continues, they may never recover.
In the wake of the Watergate reporting done by the iconic duo Woodward and Bernstein, Americans learned to be skeptical of their government and trust the media. Today, most have turned away from traditional news and view most publications as nothing more than partisan propaganda.
The damage that these revelations have on the news media cannot be understated. The United States relies on careful research and sourcing from newspapers and network news. If Americans learn that they will get better information from their favorite loud-mouthed podcaster, we may completely lose the informed content we desperately need.
The mainstream media has hammered President Trump relentlessly for the first few months of his term. If they want to remain relevant, they should give Democratic officials the same robust scrutiny they give to the Trump Administration.