Washington Week with The Atlantic’s year-in-review episode Friday contained a fleeting reference to a bombshell Wall Avenue Journal story about how the White Home and Democrats actively hid President Joe Biden’s descent into decrepitude, together with a number of public stumbles, shaking arms with the air, and taking the “quick stairs” up Air Power One.
The supposedly vigilant media acceded to Democratic needs and confirmed astonishingly little curiosity about Biden’s decline, even issuing defenses of Biden’s acuity within the face of Republican observations, defenses that look merely pathetic looking back, just like the New York Occasions story lamenting so-called Republican “low-cost fakes.”
Such defenses additionally appeared on tax-funded PBS together with a infamous change from the September 1, 2023 version of the community’s political roundtable, Washington Week with The Atlantic, after a disastrous Biden press convention spurred by a damning particular counsel report from Robert Hur.
After Politico’s Kyle Cheney issued his personal embarrassing tackle how Republicans had been simply utilizing the non-issue to assault President Biden, panelist Mark Leibovich of The Atlantic and moderator Jeffrey Goldberg (Leibovich’s editor boss at The Atlantic) went out on a limb within the Democratic president’s protection.
Leibovich referred to as out Republicans as “mendacity” about making a difficulty of Biden’s age – a difficulty that will show all too related for the Democratic ticket in 2024.
The Atlantic’s Mark Leibovich: Can I simply truly simply level out, although, that, I imply, it’s not simply making a difficulty of Biden’s age, it’s mendacity, it’s saying he’s senile, saying he’s demented, saying he’s out of it. I imply, I feel it’s vital to kind of state for a indisputable fact that loads of these are simply —
Jeffrey Goldberg: Proper. Mentally, he’s fairly acute.
Leibovich: It looks as if it.
However that embarrassing change has been flushed down the reminiscence gap on tax-funded PBS. There was no mea culpa in Goldberg and Leibovich’s newest post-election change about Biden’s age and infirmity, simply the false insinuation they had been proper all alongside:
Goldberg: Mark, I wish to ask you about Joe Biden, keep in mind Joe Biden? President of the USA for an additional few weeks. Plenty of protection within the final week or two about, together with The Wall Avenue Journal, his limitations that had been exhibiting themselves, his mental limitations or cognitive limitations, the age points, popping out lengthy earlier than this previous summer time, or the talk on June twenty seventh. You had been warning early about Biden’s age. Is there something shocking popping out to you now or is this type of a narrative a few group of individuals round Joe Biden protecting up for him?
Leibovich: I’m not likely stunned. I’m stunned to the diploma to which he has fully disappeared because the election. I assume it’s kind of apparent {that a} lame duck president by definition won’t be an element, particularly when somebody who has such an enormous footprint as Donald Trump is ready within the wings. I do assume that there’s loads of kind of unfinished reporting achieved on this, which I feel goes to return out round what this White Home actually did appear like. And is {that a} failing of the media over the previous couple of years? Possibly. However I additionally assume, , there was a really critical effort to guard him, and to shelter him, and to maintain him away from cameras, and to maintain him away from conditions the place this is able to be uncovered. And, look, is it a scandal? I don’t know if I’d use that phrase, however I additionally assume it’s a huge supply of, , data that we`re nonetheless attempting to grasp.
Leibovich authored an Atlantic piece in June 2022, “Why Biden Shouldn’t Run in 2024.” But fifteen months later, in September 2023, with a Trump-Biden rematch looming, he agreed along with his boss Goldberg’s assertion about Biden’s “fairly acute” psychological state. It is not simply politicians who’re slippery of their rhetoric.
