Media Participated in Coverup of Biden’s Decline, Experts Say

As more details continue to emerge regarding the alarming extent of former President Joe Biden’s mental and physical incapacities while serving in the most powerful office in the world, insiders are pointing out that the mainstream media willingly followed the lead of White House officials who insisted that Biden was perfectly fit to perform his duties despite a multitude of audio and video evidence showing otherwise.

According to a new book coming out this week by CNN reporter Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson entitled “Original Sin,” Biden’s cognitive decline began almost a decade before his 2024 presidential campaign for reelection, when glaring examples of Biden’s mental and physical struggles began occurring in front of cameras on a weekly basis. “Those close to him say that the first signs he was deteriorating emerged after the death of his beloved son Beau in 2015,” Tapper and Thompson write. A ghostwriter for Biden admitted in 2017 that he “was really struggling. … His cognitive capacity seemed to have been failing him.”

Despite the clear signs of Biden’s decline to those in his inner circle years before the 2020 election, his enablers pushed ahead with his presidential campaign. By 2021, Biden’s closest aides began scripting Cabinet meetings, to the point that his agency secretaries would be asked ahead of a meeting, “‘Well, what are you going to ask? If he asks a certain question, what is your answer going to be?’” By the beginning of 2023, the president’s cognitive condition had become so serious that senior White House aides were attempting to “shield him from his own staff so many people didn’t realize the extent of the decline.” Even Cabinet secretaries were eventually “kept at bay” and “didn’t get a chance to interact with the President.” The truth was that “five people were running the country,” an unnamed source close to the Biden administration told Tapper and Thompson.

Despite this, no members of Biden’s Cabinet came forward to reveal what was happening. “When they would complain internally, they were told, ‘He’s fine, be quiet,’” Tapper noted in a New Yorker interview. As Tapper and Thompson wrote, however, “The presidency requires someone who can perform at 2:00 a.m. during an emergency. Cabinet secretaries in his own administration told us that by 2024, he could not be relied upon for this.”

As observed by National Review, Biden’s inner circle “admitted to each other that Biden was becoming so physically frail that he might need to use a wheelchair in his second term. But their primary concern appeared to be that nothing be seen that would endanger his reelection — or their own hold on power, which they enjoyed as a result of Biden’s weakness.”

Notably, mainstream media reporters such as Tapper himself spent much of Biden’s term reacting with incredulity whenever the topic of the president’s fitness for office surfaced in the news. As National Review has pointed out, Tapper castigated Republicans like Lara Trump on air as far back as 2020 for highlighting Biden’s cognitive decline. “How do you think it makes little kids with stutters feel when they see you make a comment like that?” he snapped. Less than a year before his book “Original Sin” was released, he stated on air, “[Biden] is sharp mentally.” Tapper also insisted that a Wall Street Journal article published in June 2024 included “false claims … about President Biden’s mental fitness and acuity.” He also derisively dismissed the article on the grounds that WSJ is “owned by News Corp which is run by the Murdochs.” Tapper even remarked during a segment with Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), “[Biden]’s 81, and his memory, you know, it doesn’t seem great, it’s not horrible, but I don’t understand the outrage.”

Experts like Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway say that the media’s peculiar lack of curiosity about Biden’s noticeable decline must be held to account. “This was a man who was president until January of this year — holding nuclear codes,” she pointed out on Fox News. “Anyone who was involved in suppressing information about the true state of his mental decline should absolutely be asked questions about that, be held to account. And until the media start moving things in that direction, where you’re actually talking to the people who knew and what they did to cover this up, and how the media themselves were co-conspirators in that, there’s no accountability being had.”

Some accountability on the matter may be coming. The House Oversight Committee announced last week that it would “continue its investigation into the cover-up of President Biden’s mental decline and use of autopen.”

In comments to The Washington Stand, FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter observed that the results of the 2024 election were partly in reaction to how Biden’s staff, reelection campaign, and the Democratic Party attempted to cover up the former president’s cognitive decline.

“As many suspected, former President Biden was never up to the task of running the country,” he noted. “Early in his presidency, it became clear President Biden was not up to the job when his administration would call it a day at 4 p.m. As soon as Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report surfaced and his recommendation against pressing charges for Biden because he was a ‘well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,’ many understood what Hur was really saying: Biden is suffering from cognitive decline.”

“This fact puts into question every policy decision, personnel decision, pardon, and other action from the Oval Office,” Carpenter concluded. “Contrast this with the high-energy pace set by President Trump in his second term, and the American people should be encouraged to raise their expectations for our nation’s top executive.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

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