Dozens of influential media figures were asked what they got wrong in 2024 for a retrospective report, and several of the respondents admitted to eating crow over President Biden's mental acuity.
"While last year’s list varied, one of 2024’s most consequential news events, Joe Biden’s failure on the debate stage and subsequent decision to leave the presidential race, was clearly top of mind for many of our respondents this year," Semafor's Max Tani wrote.
Throughout the 2024 presidential race, many media pundits and commentators ran to Biden’s defense when there was speculation about his mental decline, including after Special Counsel Robert Hur's report about him being well-meaning but forgetful, viral videos of him looking confused, and a Wall Street Journal report about his faltering behind-the-scenes demeanor.
After Biden's poor debate performance against Donald Trump in June, pressure on him to drop out of the White House race grew so strong that he quit weeks later, despite pledging he was staying in the fight.
Several high-profile media figures told Semafor that their worst takes about 2024 were trusting that Biden still had his fastball.
The former MSNBC host initially scoffed at Republicans for calling out Biden’s mental decline ahead of his infamous debate.
"2024 was the year I posted my wrongest ever tweet," Hasan aditted.
His post before the debate said, "I think Republicans will regret setting the bar so low for Biden, and helping spread the distorted image of him as a guy who is totally out of it, suffering from dementia, no grip on reality, no ability to speak. A very low bar for him to clear tonight."
"A few hours later, he was promising to ‘beat Medicare.’ A few weeks later, he had quit the race," Hasan told Semafor, reflecting back on the post.
He went on to say, "Like many others, I was completely, utterly, totally, embarrassingly wrong, about Biden’s lack of mental competence. (But I remain right about Trump’s!)."
The MSNBC contributor and ex-GOP strategist has always been a vocal critic of President-elect Donald Trump. He admitted, however, that he judged Biden "too generously."
"I think I judged President Biden too generously for most of his term and he revealed himself to be less concerned about protecting our democratic institutions than legacy… as a result both will be badly tarnished," Miller told Semafor.
Brian Lehrer, host of "The Brian Lehrer Show," admitted that he was wrong about Biden’s mental decline.
"Many callers to my show said Joe Biden was in no shape to run for re-election. I mostly dismissed it as ageism. Then I watched the debate," Lehrer said.
Progressive journalist and blogger Matt Yglesias said that he was "wrong about one of the big questions of the year."
"I thought Joe Biden was going to prove his doubters wrong at the big debate," Yglesias told Semafor.
"I know that ever since that humiliation, the whole world thinks the entire media was in on a massive coverup, but the fact is many of us (and seemingly many members of his team) genuinely thought the situation was better than it was."
He continued, "In a lot of ways it’s more embarrassing to have been gullible and wrong when so many people with no sources and no inside info could see it clearly, but that’s what happened — I was just wrong about one of the big questions of the year."
Barro, the author of the book "Very Serious," said that the "most consequential thing I was wrong about was the extent of President Biden’s decline."
"I was shocked and appalled by his performance in the June 27th debate, but I shouldn’t have been surprised as I was," he told Semafor. "I had put too much stock in his satisfactory scripted performances (like the State of the Union) and misread the president’s avoidance of unscripted settings as a (misguided) effort to keep him on-message rather than a sign that he was incapable of engaging in them in the way he did not very long ago."
"In part, I misread the signs this way because I took Biden’s choice to agree to an early debate as a sign that he and his advisors had confidence that he could perform adequately in one … I come out of 2024 with a lot of contempt for the president and for the people around him — who have essentially been engaged in elder abuse — and also with a fair amount of embarrassment that I didn’t see through their deception earlier."
