Press Tries To Pretend It Didn’t Cover Up Biden’s Decline

On Tuesday, Axios’ Alex Thompson reported that aides for then-President Joe Biden “discussed wheelchair use if he were re-elected.” That information comes from a book that Thompson, along with CNN’s Jake Tapper, has written about Biden’s cognitive decline and, ironically, the cover-up of it (that Thompson and Tapper both engaged in).

The excerpts from Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, It’s Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again read like a confessional of sins long known to anyone with a functioning frontal lobe.

One quote from the book comes from an anonymous senior ex-Biden aide: “We attempted to shield him from his own staff … so many people didn’t realize the extent of the decline beginning in 2023.” Another quote comes from David Plouffe, who successfully managed Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. Plouffe is quoted as saying that Kamala Harris’ 107-day campaign against now President Donald Trump was a “fucking nightmare.”

“And it’s all Biden,” Plouffe reportedly said. “He totally f*cked us.”

But these supposed revelations aren’t revelatory at all — they’re merely a last-ditch attempt at institutional face-saving. As The Federalist CEO and co-founder Sean Davis said in a post on X, “This is a reputation rescue operation for corrupt corporate media. They’re only doing this now, after covering it up for years, because there’s no political cost. And to superficially absolve themselves of blame for being co-conspirators in the cover-up, they have to pretend they were misled.”

That is exactly why Thompson got up in front of a room full of self-congratulating so-called journalists last month and said “We, myself included, missed a lot of this story.”

But the media was not misled, nor were they fooled.

When Biden ended a speech on gun control with a baffling, “God Save the Queen, man,” Thompson brushed it off 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 dismissed Biden’s profanity-laced tirades against his staff as a sign of respect. 

“Being yelled at by the president has become an internal initiation ceremony in this White House, aides say — if Biden doesn’t yell at you, it could be a sign he doesn’t respect you.”

As explained by Home Care Assistance Des Moines, “Cognitive decline can cause aging adults to have sudden outbursts of anger … Your loved one’s anger could also be a sign of dementia.”

It wasn’t just Thompson who covered up the decline — err, I mean, “missed” the story.

Days before the 2024 debate between Biden and President Donald Trump, Oliver Darcy wrote for CNN: “Right-wing media figures are desperately pushing conspiracy theories about Biden ahead of the debate.” The “conspiracy theories” in question were that Biden is a “senile, mentally incapacitated elderly man who cannot remember what he had for breakfast, let alone run the federal government.”

The Independent’s Noah Berlatsky wrote in July of 2023: “Let’s fact check Biden’s so-called mental decline” and argued that “questions about the president’s fitness for office aren’t in good faith.”

NBC News’ Matt Dixon, Dasha Burns, and Alex Tabet wrote in October of 2023, “Republicans float a quiet conspiracy theory that Biden won’t be on the ballot,” adding the theory was “centered largely on the thought that Biden is too old and not sharp enough mentally.”

The examples go on and on.

Yet the propaganda press would rather paint themselves as idiots by pretending they were outwitted by a man who forgot details of his son’s death and reportedly had sundowning hours. Rather than admit they helped bury the truth, the propaganda press is pretending as though Biden was a mastermind who duped the entire White House press corps with incoherent mumbling and confusion.

The press weren’t fooled nor misled — they were willing participants. But now that there’s no political price to pay for telling the truth, they’re ready to cash in.

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