Journalists Who Participated in Gaslighting Biden’s Decline Should Face Lasting Accountability
President-elect Donald Trump is holding Democratic leaders accountable for years of deceit regarding President Biden’s mental acuity. However, our main concern is the sycophantic media that colluded in this narrative.
On Monday, Trump shared a video featuring a series of awkward clips where Democratic figures, from Rep. Nancy Pelosi to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, repeatedly dismissed claims of Biden’s mental and physical decline, insisting that he was “sharp,” “engaged,” “focused,” and that “his age is an asset.”
All of them deserve criticism, but the journalists who allowed these outrageous claims to go unchallenged—and even echoed the falsehoods—should be equally scrutinized. They insisted that Biden was showing no signs of cognitive decline, labeling any suggestion to the contrary as offensive, ignorant, and almost bigoted.
The belief that Biden was anything short of robust, even vigorous, was dismissed as right-wing conspiracy theory.
Yet the public wasn’t convinced: As of February, 86% of Americans felt Biden was too old for a second term, having witnessed his decline firsthand over several years.
As far back as 2022, a staggering 75% of Democratic voters preferred a different candidate for the 2024 election.
Yet, the facade of “Biden is fine” persisted, even after Special Counsel Robert Hur indicated a jury might view Biden as “an elderly man with a poor memory.” This was compounded by Biden himself repeatedly mistaking world leaders for their deceased predecessors.
The White House dismissed all video evidence of Biden’s decline as “cheap fakes” and manipulated transcripts to conceal signs of his ongoing memory issues.
Throughout this process, compliant journalists uncritically supported Team Biden’s narrative until the debate when Biden’s decline became too evident to ignore.
Now, they’re trying to play coy, but it’s far too late to restore their tarnished credibility.
Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan admitted he was “embarrassingly wrong” for saying “Republicans will regret . . . helping spread the distorted image of [Biden] as a guy who is totally out of it” as the debate approached.
Also, progressive journalist Matt Yglesias expressed that he “thought Joe Biden was going to prove his doubters wrong.”
Is it more troubling if they truly believed it?
Pro-Biden journalists had access to the same evidence as the rest of us regarding Biden’s compromised state, yet instead of approaching it skeptically, they joined the effort to mislead the public instead of doing their jobs.
Incoming Trump Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt plans to overhaul the list of individuals granted preferred access to White House briefings, introducing nontraditional voices like podcasters into the mix.
Given the mainstream media’s gross and willful neglect to cover one of the most significant stories of the decade—Biden’s unfitness for office from Day 1 and how his entire staff concealed it—such a move seems only fair.
No one involved in perpetuating, hiding, or ignoring this appalling scandal should ever escape judgment.
