Despite the fact that it was obvious then-President Joe Biden should not be running for a second term in office, those closest to him, including his media defenders, repeatedly tried to gaslight the American people into thinking he was sharp as a tack and physically fit to lead the country for another four years.
Two weeks before the now-infamous June 2024 presidential debate between Biden and then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, for instance, a video emerged showing Biden looking lost, out of it and wooden during an L.A. fundraiser and having to be led off the stage by the hand by former President Barack Obama, who gently guided the man who once served with him as vice president away from the crowd.
Even with that clear and convincing evidence, we were told by Biden’s handlers, other Democratic supporters and numerous media figures that such videos were “cheap fakes” that allegedly had been deceptively edited by the right to deceive the American people about Biden’s condition.
“Some of us are watching long, complete speeches by the president,” CNN media hall monitor Brian Stelter said in a segment not long after the viral fundraiser video. “Others (are) just watching short, out-of-context clips on social media. Two audiences are seeing two very different reflections.”
North Carolina native Andrew Bates, who at the time was a senior deputy press secretary for Biden, had a mini-meltdown after seeing a New York Post story on Biden appearing to “freeze up” at the fundraiser.
“Fresh off being fact-checked by at least 6 mainstream outlets for lying about POTUS with cheap fakes, Rupert Murdoch’s sad little super pac, the New York Post, is back to disrespecting it’s (sic) readers and itself once again,” Bates proclaimed on Twitter/X. “Their ethical standards could deal with a little unfreezing.”
The only thing Stelter and Bates ended up proving with their remarks, however, was that the media’s and the Biden White House’s complicity in the cover-up of Biden’s condition was a very real thing.
Now here we are, four months into Trump’s second term in office, and books galore about Biden’s decline and what the White House knew about it are either out or are coming out. The books include quotes from former Biden senior staffers who now feel like they can tell the truth, but in a way they think absolves them of their role in the cover-up.
In one, written by author Chris Whipple, Biden’s longtime close friend and former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain had “never seen him so exhausted and out of it” during his debate prep. “Biden was unaware of what was happening in his own campaign.”
Michael LaRosa, who worked for Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign as Jill Biden’s traveling press secretary and then later as her official White House press secretary, stated in February, “The president’s team was scared to death of impromptu, unscripted, unrehearsed, unpracticed, unchoreographed, anything, they couldn’t compete for the attention economy.”
As such, in an effort to avoid disastrous on-the-record quotes and confusion from Biden, they often prioritized finding out questions reporters had in mind to ask Biden ahead of time, oftentimes making it conditional for access.
Biden’s press aides were “sort of like dog-trained to make the questions conditional for interviews,” LaRosa also revealed during a recent interview with “Young Turks” founder/host Cenk Uygur.
While it’s nice that so many of these people are finally admitting to what we all knew to be true at the time, what would have been really honorable and brave would have been for them to have spoken up when it mattered the most, when Biden was still in office and when there were legitimate concerns and questions about who was actually running the country.
North Carolina native Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a media analyst and regular contributor to RedState and Legal Insurrection.
