Newsbusters

Now, it can be told.

President Joe Biden wasn’t capable of discharging his duties as Commander in Chief for large swathes of his single-term presidency. New reporting from The Wall Street Journal shared some, but not all, of the shocking details.

The rest will likely come from tell-all tomes to be published in the coming years.

Except most clear-thinking Americans already knew about Biden’s cognitive decline. They saw years of cringe-worthy videos where Biden couldn’t speak clearly, moved haltingly and needed basic cues to enter and exit the stage.

 

Biden reads a teleprompter cue, “repeat the line,” before repeating a quote. pic.twitter.com/mRoSaVskFA
— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) July 8, 2022
 

Biden finishes his speech, turns around, spins in a circle and looks confused before someone off camera appears to direct him off stage pic.twitter.com/HkxE9T3tVl
— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) October 20, 2022
 

President Biden appears to be lost on stage as he tries to make an exit. FLOUTS has to direct him. When will there be a cognitive health evaluation?pic.twitter.com/UcL722ePTs
— Katie Daviscourt 📸 (@KatieDaviscourt) September 28, 2022
 

Corporate journalists knew even more than Joe and Jane Sixpack, but they dutifully covered it up like their Democratic masters demanded.

They weren’t alone.

Late-night comedians, the satirists tasked with speaking truth to power, played along with the ruse. A few took it further, raising funds for a president incapable of handling basic duties like holding press conferences or sitting for softball interviews.

Progressive comedians like Jimmy Kimmel, John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers pretended as if Biden was fine … until a fateful debate shamed them into telling the truth.

Sort of.

 

 

These far-Left propagandists poked fun at Biden’s age for most of his presidency, framing the gags as harmless riffs on senior living.

Case in point: Here’s Colbert referencing reports that Biden’s aides protected him from over-exerting himself.

“But Biden doesn’t see it that way,” he added. According to aides, the president frequently reports that he “feels so much younger than my age”.

“Well, good for you, sir! You don’t look one day over let’s change the subject,” Colbert joked.

Ha ha. This isn’t about an older man taking sensible precautions. Biden’s restrictions went far beyond that. Here’s just one example drawn from the WSJ investigation.

Once concerns arose early on, Biden advisers instructed top lawmakers and allies to keep exchanges with the president “short and focused,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Staffers reportedly also ensured most of Biden’s meetings were held later in the day due to the president not being “at his best” first thing in the morning, with the option to scrap meetings entirely if he was having an “off day.”

Imagine if a global crisis struck during such a “day.”

Ironically, the WSJ published a similarly frightening article earlier in the year, noting some of the alarming issues Biden’s deterioration raised. Colbert rushed to the rescue at the time, acting like a de facto White House press secretary.

He’s actually a political satirist carrying water for Team Biden. 

“You heard that right, ladies and gentlemen: Joe Biden is old,” Stephen Colbert said. “Which, of course, could disqualify him from being president. After all, being old is a felony.”

There’s more:

“This blockbuster lid-blower-offer also included this little nugget explaining that Biden is someone who has both good moments and bad ones, in a clear contrast with his opponent, who only has bad ones.”

Meyers of NBC fame carried plenty of water on his own.

“The Wall Street Journal published an article yesterday that claims President Biden appears to be slipping in private meetings. He keeps saying crazy stuff that makes no sense like, ‘a convicted felon is beating me in the polls.’”

Colbert also worked overtime to diminish a scathing report from Special Counsel Robert Hur labeling Biden an “elderly man with poor memory.”

“Voters are just going to have to choose between a sympathetic well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory or a contemptible malicious elderly rapist with a poor memory.”

Biden and Trump are both old and have poor memories. Nothing to see here. Move along.

We saw the truth differently. It was spreading like wildfire on social media. Watching political satirists ignore it felt like a special kind of “cheap fake.”

 

 

Sometimes politically-expedient monologues weren’t enough.

Meyers met one-on-one with Biden earlier this year in an attempt to downplay the “age” factor. That kind of propaganda messaging is priceless.

 

 

Jimmy Fallon, who has turned NBC’s iconic “Tonight Show” into an also-ran on the late-night circuit, failed to hold Biden accountable for his serial, age-related gaffes. He opted not to do damage control like Colbert and Meyers, but he also refused to alert Americans to the problem.

Many late-night viewers accepted the charade at face value. sadly.

John Oliver, unlike his late-night colleagues, mostly ignored the age issue. Apparently, he and his writing team never saw any of those embarrassing Biden videos.

The worst came earlier this year when both Colbert and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel literally passed the hat around for Biden’s re-election campaign. Both comedians saw Biden up close and said nothing about his diminished state.

Kimmel even defended Biden after the leader froze up at the end of their fundraising appearance.

The corrupt corporate media had Kimmel’s back with the lie, publishing a phony fact check and echoing Team Biden’s “cheap fake” attack line.

We know that Oscar-winner George Clooney noticed Biden’s decline during their fundraising appearance together. The star held his tongue until political expediency interceded.

 

Joe Biden appears to freeze at his LA fundraiser. Has to be led off stage by Obama. pic.twitter.com/iUKALvdqPD
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) June 16, 2024
 

Bill Maher, the most respectable of the liberal late-night crew, hit both sides of Biden’s age issue. Earlier in Biden’s presidency, Maher suggested the president lean into his wizened state.

Later, Maher worried the age factor could hurt Biden’s chances of defeating Trump a second time. He suggested the president admit his flaws and focus on policy.

Maher, despite his ability to call out his own side with regularity, downplayed the obvious cognitive decline most Americans noticed with horror.

Colbert and co. will spend the next four years holding Team Trump accountable. They’ll lean into plenty of Fake News along the way, if past is prologue.

They hope we’ll forget how they not only ignored the biggest scandal of the decade, they actively made it worse.

Not a chance, gang.

MSNBC weekend host and legal contributor Katie Phang joined colleague Joy Reid on Friday’s installment of The ReidOut to declare that “the arc of justice has been crushed” now that Donald Trump will not be getting the hefty sentence on January 10 that progressives like them were hoping for in the New York hush money case.

Reid kicked things off with an unrelated matter: Judge Juan Merchan not buying Trump’s argument that the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling is relevant to the case, “Katie my friend, I want to go to one of the parts of this decision that I found the most fascinating, the most interesting. Judge Merchan wrote a really fascinating decision, talk to us about this apparently made-up concept called presidential-elect immunity and how that got knocked down.”

 

 

Phang began by applauding Merchan’s ruling and attacking the “horrible SCOTUS opinion,” but she eventually pivoted to the sentencing:

Remember, this was the falsification of business records and this happened before Donald Trump went into the Oval Office, but, Joy, even though this is a meticulous opinion, as you note, and I give Judge Merchan his flowers whenever they are due, I want to say, I am angry, and if anyone’s watching this right now is angry, you’re allowed to be angry, but you’re not angry at Judge Merchan.

Merchan does not want to throw the incoming president in jail for various reasons, not the least of which is practicality, so Phang was left to find other people to be angry at and naturally settled on the Supreme Court and Trump himself:

Be angry appropriately and lay the blame at the feet of Donald Trump, the Supreme Court of the United States, because the arc of justice has been crushed and flattened by the weight of the Oval Office, not because of the dignity or integrity of that office, but the deceit by which Donald Trump made it back into that Oval Office.

That makes no sense. Love it or hate it, the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling had no impact on the election. The Court didn’t force voters to pick Trump over Kamala Harris, nor does not liking the way Trump campaigned have anything to do with anything. Phang’s preferred candidate just lost, and it really is that simple.

Nevertheless, Phang continued ranting:

This is why people, angry by this outcome, should say, ‘There is no true justice anymore,’ because you and I both know that if this was someone else, Joy, this outcome would have been different. There would have been a sentence held in advance, there would have been something had teeth to it, but this is also spitting in the face of jurors that sat for more than seven weeks, the original grand jurors that return an indictment, and then the jurors that sat seven weeks and listened to the evidence and rendered a verdict of guilty.

And what would Phang’s alternative be? Put the president in jail? Or is she just venting to an echo chamber that is still having trouble processing they lost to Donald Trump, again, even with all his legal controversies?

Here is a transcript for the January 3 show:

MSNBC The ReidOut

1/3/2025

7:04 PM ET

JOY REID: Katie my friend, I want to go to one of the parts of this decision that I found the most fascinating, the most interesting. Judge Merchan wrote a really fascinating decision, talk to us about this apparently made-up concept called presidential-elect immunity and how that got knocked down.

KATIE PHANG: Yeah, and even Denver’s having a chuckle at that too, because Donald Trump was trying to abuse the horrible SCOTUS opinion that came out that provided him with presidential immunity by trying to distort it to create a brand new avenue of immunity called President-elect immunity, but Judge Merchan made quick and swift dispatch with the idea that Trump has this version of President-elect immunity and it also threads the needle carefully, I think, for appellate purposes, Joy, because it makes clear that the action of a president when they are not sitting in the Oval Office does not afford him immunity that covers the bases for the conduct that was criminal in this instance. 

Remember, this was the falsification of business records and this happened before Donald Trump went into the Oval Office, but, Joy, even though this is a meticulous opinion, as you note, and I give Judge Merchan his flowers whenever they are due, I want to say, I am angry, and if anyone’s watching this right now is angry, you’re allowed to be angry, but you’re not angry at Judge Merchan.

Be angry appropriately and lay the blame at the feet of Donald Trump, the Supreme Court of the United States, because the arc of justice has been crushed and flattened by the weight of the Oval Office, not because of the dignity or integrity of that office, but the deceit by which Donald Trump made it back into that Oval Office.

And this is why people, angry by this outcome, should say, “There is no true justice anymore,” because you and I both know that if this was someone else, Joy, this outcome would have been different. There would have been a sentence held in advance, there would have been something had teeth to it, but this is also spitting in the face of jurors that sat for more than seven weeks, the original grand jurors that return an indictment, and then the jurors that sat seven weeks and listened to the evidence and rendered a verdict of guilty.

PBS News Hour’s first weekly recap featuring Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart and New York Times columnist David Brooks of the new year concluded with the duo taking turns singing the praises of former President Jimmy Carter and “the glow around him.” While one might have expected the liberal Capehart to say such things, the supposedly conservative Brooks failed to even mention one area where Carter was not the model former president some want to paint him as.

Host Amna Nawaz began with Capehart, “Our politics, our nation, obviously very different right now to the times that he was living and leading in. But I just want to ask each of you—Jonathan, you first—what are you in this moment taking away from the legacy of President Carter?”

 

 

Capehart began by recalling that when “I was a little kid when Jimmy Carter was in the White House, and I actually wrote him a letter during the Iranian hostage crisis, because I couldn’t understand why everyone was so mean to the president. He was doing everything he could to get them out.”

After recalling someone in the White House wrote him back, Capehart moved on to Carter’s post-presidency:

But in looking at his life, he spent, if my math is right, 10 times longer out of the White House than he did inside. And I remember, as a kid, I knew people were yelling at him. People didn’t like him. People hated him when he was in the White House. And yet, 40 years after the fact, the glow around him, because of all the work he did in the post-presidency, is something to see, where you have Democrats and Republicans praising him for what he did, especially outside of the White House. I can’t imagine we would—we will see that again.

As for Brooks, after joking about writing Carter a letter about the need to deregulate the trucking industry, he claimed, “The stuff on Habitat for Humanity, he brought faith into politics in a very admirable way, I thought. I think it influenced the way he thought about human rights. It certainly influenced his post-presidency but he was not overbearing with it.”

He added, “But he was from a time when you go back and read those essays. I would read a bunch of columns at the time of his presidency. It was just so long ago. It was such a different culture, where people were really—it was a much better time. I hate to think of decline, but we have had such a political decline.”

When Republicans die, the media will frequently portray them as controversial or complicated, so it should not be considered speaking ill of the dead to point out that while Carter’s post-presidency was more than just Habitat for Humanity. He also tried to legitimize Hamas, flirted with anti-Semitism, and tried to undermine President George H.W. Bush as he sought to work with a global coalition to eject Saddam Hussein’s Iraq from Kuwait by trying to convince America’s coalition allies to abandon the effort.

Here is a transcript for the January 3 show:

PBS News Hour

1/3/2025

7:51 PM ET

AMNA NAWAZ: Well, next week, meanwhile, I need to ask you both about this moment we will be marking as a nation, which is the passing of former President Jimmy Carter.

Our politics, our nation, obviously very different right now to the times that he was living and leading in. But I just want to ask each of you — Jonathan, you first — what are you in this moment taking away from the legacy of President Carter?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Well, I was a little kid when Jimmy Carter was in the White House, and I actually wrote him a letter during the Iranian hostage crisis, because I couldn’t understand why everyone was so mean to the president. He was doing everything he could to get them out.

I wrote this in the letter, and I got a response, not from the president, but from someone in the White House. I do have it somewhere, in a box somewhere. But I tell that story only to say this is the first time I wrote — I have ever written to a president.

But in looking at his life, he spent, if my math is right, 10 times longer out of the White House than he did inside. And I remember, as a kid, I knew people were yelling at him. People didn’t like him. People hated him when he was in the White House. And yet, 40 years after the fact, the glow around him, because of all the work he did in the post-presidency, is something to see, where you have Democrats and Republicans praising him for what he did, especially outside of the White House.

I can’t imagine we would — we will see that again.

NAWAZ: David?

DAVID BROOKS: Jonathan is such a nicer person than I am. I wrote him a letter saying, why can’t you deregulate the trucking industry, you weakling?

NAWAZ: Different letter. Different kind of letter.

BROOKS: No, I didn’t write that. No, I mean, he — the stuff on Habitat for Humanity, he brought faith into politics in a very admirable way, I thought. I think it influenced the way he thought about human rights. It certainly influenced his post-presidency but, he was not overbearing with it.

But he was from a time when you go back and read those essays. I would read a bunch of columns at the time of his presidency. It was just so long ago. It was such a different culture, where people were really — it was a much better time. I hate to think of decline, but we have had such a political decline.

I also read from a sports columnist that Babe Ruth hit more home runs in Jimmy Carter’s lifetime than any active player today. So that’s a long time ago, when Jimmy Carter was born and lived.

As a new Congress is sworn in, the liberal media fall into a classic pattern of finding new far-left stars. In this case, Friday’s CBS Mornings fawned over Sarah McBride, Delaware’s new (and only) House representative. McBride’s claim to fame? Well, it’s being the first openly transgender member of the U.S. House.

Unsurprisingly, it also gave CBS a chance to vent underlying criticisms of the Republican bathroom policies.

Fill-in co-host (and Saturday co-host) Dana Jacobson had the flowery set-up:

A new Congress is being sworn in today, and history will be made when Sarah McBride takes the oath of office as the first openly transgender member of the U.S. House. At 34 years old, the Democrat has quickly risen in Delaware’s political ranks, and now she will serve as the state’s sole representative in Washington. Scott MacFarlane hit the road to learn more about her and her priorities in the new Congress.

 

 

Also unsurprisingly, many of these new stars are sent into orbit by the press, regardless of their importance within the House, as icons for liberal policy prerogatives.

McBride, speaking to January 6 correspondent Scott MacFarlane, was painted as almost a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-type even though McBride “got her start working for then-State Attorney General Beau Biden, the President’s late son.”

McBride’s trans-man husband passed away in 2014 from a brief bout with cancer, which McBride said was an inspiration: “I’ve lived the American healthcare system. I have become deeply passionate about health care policy, housing policy, and policy around our care economy.”

As the interview continued, CBS’s MacFarlane focused on the historic nature of the candidate, and its contrast with the Republican Party and concerns raised by Congresswoman Nancy Mace (R-SC): “When she first arrived in Washington, days after the election, for orientation, she faced an abrupt reality.”

Mace has expressed her concern regarding the use of bathrooms and one’s biological sex, and pushed a ban on such activity within the Capitol. As current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson supports such legislation, McBride embodied the media’s pawn for potential sympathy on issues that in reality have yet to impact a major election.

MacFarlane lamented this concern, asking McBride if they feel “a burden to carry” as “a history maker” (click “expand”):

MACFARLANE: Her identity isn’t something McBride has shied away from talking about, but she mostly sticks to speaking out on the issues affecting all of Delaware, something her constituents recognize.

DELAWARE DINER PATRON: You know, that she is determined to deal with issues. She’s determined to govern.

MACFARLANE: Though she was voted in against the backdrop of an election year saturated with ads from Trump and some of McBride’s new colleagues blasting Democrats for supporting rights of trans people. [TO MCBRIDE] You’re walking in here as a history maker. Is that a burden to carry?

MCBRIDE: The only way that I can guarantee that while I may be a first, I’m not the last, is to quite simply be the best member of Congress that I can be, to show that no matter who you are and what your background is, you can be a good doctor or a good lawyer or, yes, a damn good legislator. And through that, we can build a democracy that genuinely includes all of our voices.

With the question of the continuation of either pro or anti-transgender policies occurring in the next year, McBride will no doubt be a symbol for transgenderism, which makes up less than half a percent of the population of Delaware as well as the entire country.

Paint it as they may, CBS seemed to use the significance of  one representative as a pawn for not only the glorification of the Democratic political party, and if McBride doesn’t pan out, there will be a new one in the 2026 midterms.

 

The transcript is below, click “expand” to read:

CBS Mornings 

1/3/2024

8:39:29 AM EST
 

DANA JACOBSON: A new Congress is being sworn in today, and history will be made when Sarah McBride takes the oath of office as the first openly transgender member of the U.S. House. At 34 years old, the Democrat has quickly risen in Delaware’s political ranks, and now she will serve as the state’s sole representative in Washington. Scott Macfarlane hit the road to learn more about her and her priorities in the new congress.

[CUT TO VIDEO]

SCOTT MACFARLANE: Sarah McBride has been busy packing up to come to Washington.

REP. SARAH MCBRIDE (D-DE): This should go in the office.

MACFARLANE: Leaving her seat in Delaware’s state house to become the first transgender member of the U.S. Congress.

MCBRIDE (D-DE): I don’t think there’s a single room outside my home that has actually played more of a role in my life than this room.

MACFARLANE: After making quite a name for herself here during four years as the state senator, she told us when we came to visit, voters in this small state know her story well.

MCBRIDE (D-DE): In Delaware, everyone’s dated, mated, or related. And so it’s — I mean, that’s one of the things I love about this state.

MACFARLANE: A native of Wilmington, McBride got her start working for then State Attorney General Beau Biden, the president’s late son. And it was a personal tragedy that inspired her to run for public office herself.

MCBRIDE (D-DE): I was there by his side to help him fight for as long as he was able to.

MACFARLANE: When her husband Andy was diagnosed and later died of cancer at just 27 years old.

MCBRIDE (D-DE): The lessons that I took from Andy that I think about really every single day as I serve in public office and assume this role, just how much Andy was able to balance conviction with collaboration. Just how much he was able to value principle with pragmatism.

MACFARLANE: Throughout Andy’s battle with cancer, McBride was his main caregiver. She said that’s shaped her priorities for her new job.

MCBRIDE (D-DE): I’ve lived the American health care system. I have become deeply passionate about health care policy, housing policy, and policy around our care economy.

MACFARLANE: When she first arrived in Washington, days after the election, for orientation she faced an abrupt reality.

REP. NANCY MACE (R-SC): So I’m absolutely 100% going to stand in the way of any man who wants to be in a women’s restroom.

MACFARLANE: South Carolina Republican Nancy Mace argued for a ban on people using bathrooms on U.S. Capitol grounds that don’t match the genders they were assigned at birth.

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): Women deserve women’s-only spaces.

MACFARLANE: House speaker Mike Johnson promptly ordered the new rule to go into effect immediately.

MCBRIDE (D-DE): I thought that they’d give me a chance to learn the building, and not get lost in the tunnels before they tried to distract from the fact that they have absolutely no policy solutions. Trans people have been working in this building for decades. Trans people have been visiting the capitol for decades. There has never been a problem.

MACFARLANE: Her identity isn’t something McBride has shied away from talking about, but she mostly sticks to speaking out on the issues affecting all of Delaware. Something her constituents recognize.

MAN: She is determined to deal with issues, she’s determined to govern.

MACFARLANE: Though she was voted in against the backdrop of an election year saturated with ads from Trump and some of McBride’s new colleagues blasting Democrats for supporting rights of trans people. You’re walking in here as a history maker. Is that a burden to carry?

MCBRIDE (D-DE): The only way that I can guarantee that while I may be a first, I’m not the last, is to quite simply be the best member of congress that I can be, to show that no matter who you are and what your background is, you can be a good doctor or a good lawyer or, yes, a damn good legislator. And through that we can build a democracy that genuinely includes all of our voices.

Surprisingly, the networks weren’t riveted by President Biden awarding a presidential medal to Liz Cheney (and Democrat Bennie Thompson) for their work on the Pelosi-Picked Panel on January 6. 

ABC, CBS, and NBC all seemed to skip this little ceremony with the standing ovations on the evening newscasts. Biden gave the Presidential Citizens Medal to 20 people on Thursday afternoon. It’s not like the Big Three didn’t have the footage. On the PBS News Hour, anchor Amna Nawaz offered about a half a minute on it. She concluded with the note that Trump thinks both Cheney and Thompson should be in jail.

Why? There was no detail. House Republicans have argued the Pelosi-Picked Panel did not preserve all the evidence and video depositions collected, especially in the area of security around the Capitol. They’ve criticized Cheney for having contact with witness Cassidy Hutchinshon without her lawyer’s knowledge. That’s witness tampering. But the liberal media don’t care what House Republicans find. They’re sticking with Pelosi’s storyline.

The national newspapers were also a little bored with Biden’s medal ceremony. We couldn’t find it in The Wall Street Journal on Friday. The Washington Post put it on page A-14, and the New York Times on page A-11. The Times preposterously explained the medals were part of Biden’s “push for bipartisanship and decency in politics.” This is pure publicity, claiming that Biden’s been decent and bipartisan to the Republicans. Who can forget Biden saying the Republicans were “Jim Crow 2.0”? They were MAGA “extremists” undermining democracy. There was no decency.

So how will the Democrats greet this January 6? They refused to answer when Fred Lucas at the Daily Signal asked whether they would certify Trump’s victory. In case you missed it on vacation, there was a December 26 op-ed in The Hill, titled “Congress has the power to block Trump from taking office, but lawmakers must act now.”

This insurrection op-ed was penned by lawyers Evan Davis, a former president of the New York City Bar Association, and David Schulte, a Chicago investment banker, both of whom clerked for then-Justice Potter Stewart on the Supreme Court.  Ignore the evidence of victory. Full speed ahead!

We close with a pair of MSNBC videos. Chris Hayes and Alexi McCammond were upset the Democrats have seemingly gone soft on calling Trump a fascist threat to democracy. How MSNBC is that?

That’s not so much the case when Morning Joe regular Steve Rattner displayed a chart on immigration and admitted “The border was not Biden’s finest moment, frankly,” and “Trump was not wrong” when he called it a crisis. Remember that when Biden started to clamp down on the border, the AP asserted “Biden has shifted far to the right on immigration since his winning campaign four years ago.”

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