Media Questioning Trump’s Health After Hiding Biden’s Decline

The new talking points from the left and their propaganda press corps has dropped: After five years of covering up President Joe Biden’s obvious and worsening mental and physical decline, it’s time to question President Donald Trump’s health.

Just days after Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper released their new book, Original Sin, which covers Biden’s cognitive decline and the massive cover-up (while ignoring their own involvement in the cover-up), the authors are now begging the American people to focus on Trump’s health.

Thompson said Sunday on MSNBC that there must be “investigating reporting” on Trump’s health.

“[Trump] was completely untransparent during the 2023-2024 campaign,” Thompson said. “He has not been transparent since, and there is no mechanism forcing him or any future president to be transparent about their health. He could be on anything. We really have no idea. So I think it’s a really vital question.”

“Donald Trump was older on his Inauguration Day than Joe Biden was on his,” Thompson continued. “Donald Trump’s health is completely fair game, and there should be incredibly investigative reporting on how it’s affecting his job as president.”

The comments echoed what Tapper said Thursday: “When it comes to the president, President Trump, while he appears healthy, he has not been transparent about his health records. And I think that’s something that the American people have a right to.”

Notice the difference? When Trump appears healthy, the press demands a deep dive. When Biden didn’t appear healthy, the press helped him cover it up.

Seen in Politico on Tuesday: “It’s easy to get numb to all this stuff: But if we’re going to (rightly) hammer much of the media for failing to cover Biden’s decline when it was hiding in plain sight, it’s probably also incumbent on us to keep on pointing out that weekends like this, in a different way, also unimaginably far from traditional presidential behavior. Equally, Trump has (very publicly) acted like this for years — and won reelection without softening his edges. And for plenty of his supporters, this bewildering, careening, no-holds-barred approach to the presidency is entirely the point. It’s certainly a spectacle.”

Translation: Yes, we lied about Biden, but that’s in the past. Let’s pivot back to Trump.

Taken together, the Tapper and Thompson tour — along with Politico’s spin — makes the agenda crystal clear. Original Sin and the subsequent coverage isn’t an exposé — it’s a pretext. This book and the discussion among the left-wing press isn’t about confronting the truth and finding accountability. It’s about preserving the moral high ground just long enough to justify a renewed campaign against Trump.

But they’ve already disqualified themselves as being trustworthy sources.

As I previously reported, “When Biden bafflingly tacked ‘God Save the Queen, man’ onto the end of a speech about gun violence, Thompson dismissed it as ‘possible’ sarcasm.”

“Biden’s weird phrases are sometimes weaponized by the GOP to insinuate the 80-year-old president is in mental decline,” Thompson said. “But Biden has been using these unique phrases for years — even as some of his aides remain confused by their meaning.”

Thompson also tried to dismiss the fact that Biden needed a document with “large print and photos that include his precise path to a podium” before an event by saying that “organizing presidential events … is intensive and detail focused for every commander-in-chief” and that these are “seemingly ordinary practices” that are “receiving fresh scrutiny.”

“Between the lines,” Thompson wrote, “Republicans have tried to highlight videos in which Biden sometimes appears unsure of where to walk on and off stage as a way to suggest he isn’t mentally fit for office.”

Weeks before the 2020 presidential election, Tapper accused Lara Trump of “mocking” Biden’s “stutter” when she dared question his mental fitness.

“I think you were mocking his stutter,” Tapper said. “I think you have absolutely no standing to diagnose somebody’s cognitive decline …”

Tapper also claimed in 2022 that Biden was “sharp … mentally.”

“I think the question is physically, right, more so? And the guy who is his chief opponent is only three our four years younger than him,” Tapper said.

But now they want to focus on Trump’s cognitive decline?

The press isn’t talking about Biden’s decline because they suddenly care about truth or accountability, it’s because they want to use that narrative to justify turning the scrutiny onto Trump. As expected, Original Sin is just a half-hearted mea culpa so that the left-wing propaganda press can reclaim just enough credibility to do what they always wanted to do: go after Trump.

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2