For three weeks following President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, the media reported left and right on Biden’s cognitive decline. The American people had seen with their own eyes how far the president had fallen, and the press could not possibly ignore it. The story dominated the news cycle and drove the growing Democratic movement to force him out of the presidential race.
But with Biden’s announcement that he is dropping out of the presidential race, media coverage of his cognitive decline has all but dried up. The difference is jarring.
Consider the grim picture of decline painted by the media before Biden decided to withdraw from his reelection bid. The New York Times reported that people “who encountered [Biden] behind closed doors noticed that he increasingly appeared confused or listless, or would lose the thread of conversations.” A Parkinson’s expert had visited the White House eight times over the past year, the Times later added. Journalist Carl Berstein told CNN that there had been “15, 20, occasions in the last year and a half” when the president had shown obvious decline. Axios reported that Biden was only “dependably engaged” between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. New York Magazine published an article headlined “The Conspiracy of Silence to Protect Joe Biden,” which reported that “[t]he president’s mental decline was like a dark family secret for many elite supporters.”
Compare this to how the media is treating Biden now. From print to cable news, the president has been lauded as a hero for “passing the torch.” An op-ed in the New York Times following Biden’s surrender was headlined “What Joe Biden Just Did Is Utterly Extraordinary.” The paper’s editorial board added: “Mr. Biden has now done what Mr. Trump never will: He has placed the national interest above his own pride and ambition.” CNN’s Van Jones said in the wake of Biden’s decision: “His heart is as big as ever…. This is the difference between a politician and a leader.” The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols said, “President Joe Biden has chosen to put his country over his own ego, a heroic decision that shows the difference between a political party and a cult of personality.” Actor George Clooney (who just a week earlier had said the Biden he encountered at his fundraiser “wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020”) said Biden was “saving democracy once again.”
This obfuscates the reality of the situation: Biden was essentially forced out because his cognitive decline had become impossible to hide from voters. In fact, a CBS News-YouGov poll found that 72 percent of voters “do not believe Biden has the mental or cognitive health to serve as president.” Biden is not a man heroically embracing a new generation of leadership. He is an aging old man who had the keys forcibly taken away from him because of his inability to reliably string together a sentence. The pretense that the president is a hero for stepping aside serves only to cover up the cognitive decline that made his continued candidacy untenable.
Many have even gone into defense mode for the president following his exit. In a Washington Post op-ed, E.J. Dionne Jr. argued that lawmakers who sought to remove Biden from the race really believe he is an incredible president: “Despite Biden’s suspicions to the contrary, they really do appreciate him. These people admire his extraordinary record.” Late Show host Stephen Colbert announced after Biden left the race that he was “retiring all of [his] ‘Joe Biden is old’ jokes.” Colbert said, “He steered this country out of a horrific pandemic. He saved countless lives by encouraging people to get vaccinated. He brought the economy back, he rallied our allies, he reasserted America’s place in the world stage.”
What stands out most is what is unspoken. Virtually no mainstream media outlets are questioning whether the cognitive decline they have reported on so furiously in recent weeks impairs Biden’s ability to lead the country. The media only cared to report on Biden’s mental decline when it threatened the Left’s continuance in power. Now that the threat is neutralized, it’s all in the past.
If the media doesn’t change its approach to covering Biden’s cognitive decline — and fast — the shift in narrative will give the public a whiplash that will further diminish trust in journalism. And it will leave the country exposed to the threats that will inevitably arise from having a president who has lost it.
Ellie Gardey Holmes is the author of Newsom Unleashed: The Progressive Lust for Unbridled Power.
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