Do NOT let the media lie about Joe Biden

He didn't quit voluntarily, and he's far from a hero. He hid his cognitive decline for years, hoping to fool Americans into reelecting him. He deserves scorn, not praise.

Once again, the elite media is trying to rewrite history in real time.

Not even 24 hours after a Democratic and public rebellion forced President Joe Biden to give up his desperate quest for a second term¹, the spinning and gaslighting began.

Biden is an “American hero,” one New York Times opinion piece claimed yesterday. What he did is “utterly extraordinary,” another said. The New Yorker referred to his “act of selflessness.”

Funny, no one called Richard Nixon selfless when he resigned rather than face impeachment in 1974. Or Lyndon B. Johnson a hero for quitting his reelection bid in 1968 after a national rebellion over Vietnam.

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(Anti-gaslighting, for less than 20 cents a day.)

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The media’s effort to whitewash the collapse of Biden’s campaign and pretend his allies and its own pressure did not make him quit is stunningly brazen. It must be confronted immediately.

Its consequences go far past how history will view Biden.

Most importantly, pretending Biden quit the race on his own gives a pass to Vice President Kamala Harris, his replacement as the Democratic nominee. It lets Harris avoid explaining how much she knew about efforts to hide Biden’s mental decline from the public, as well as her role - if any - in forcing him out.

Consider the bizarre timeline of the last two months.

On May 15, Biden’s campaign agreed to a debate with Donald Trump on CNN on June 27. The debate was set for almost 20 weeks before Election Day, months before presidential debates normally occur. In fact, it was scheduled early enough to happen before the conventions at which Trump and Biden would be officially nominated.

Almost no one had publicly suggested such an early debate, and Biden’s camp took credit for the timing. As the Washington Post reported:

“President Biden made his terms clear for two one-on-one debates, and Donald Trump accepted those terms,” campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement.

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(You misspelled zero. And gaslight.)

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What made the early debate even more unusual is that Biden faced no public pressure from Democrats to hold it before the convention. As President, he towered over any and all potential opponents in his party. He had the Democratic nomination locked up.

Republicans had suggested for years that Biden’s mental fitness might be fading, pointing to his speaking lapses, vacant stares, near-falls, and unwillingness to face the media or public at unscripted events. In February, a federal prosecutor who had interviewed Biden at length in fall 2023 released a report calling him an “elderly man with a poor memory.”

But Democrats and the media brushed off these objections and blasted Biden’s skeptics as conspiracy theorists and ageists. He had faced no serious primary challengers and won more than 14 million primary votes.

In May, he was neck-and-neck with Trump, who was being tried in a Manhattan court for misclassifying business records. On some days, Trump seemed to have a slight edge; on others the race effectively seemed even.

So why did Biden - or the people speaking for him - push a debate before the convention, when a public meltdown represented the only threat to a nomination Biden had already secured?

No one has ever properly answered that question.

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Then June 27 arrived.

And Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. showed the world that - once again - the elite media had failed completely, or hidden the truth to serve the Democratic Party, or both.

Biden appeared worse than merely lost onstage. He was vacant, unable to finish his sentences or express coherent thoughts.

And his party - which until that moment had backed him unequivocally - turned on him ferociously.

Day by day, the feeding frenzy worsened.

Biden sat for interviews and even spoke at an hour-long press conference. But Democratic confidence in him appeared shattered, and he could not regain it. Large Democratic donors stopped giving money, and lawmakers said he should not run.

On Sunday, July 21 - 24 days after the debate - Biden bowed to the inevitable and announced on X he would not run for a second term.

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Meanwhile, stories that top Democrats had seen Biden’s decline long before the debate - or even this year - belatedly emerged. On Sunday night, after Biden withdrew, the Wall Street Journal published an article that opened with a stunning anecdote about a meeting he had had with House Democrats:

In 30 minutes of remarks on Capitol Hill, Biden had spoken disjointedly and failed to make a concrete ask of lawmakers, according to Democrats in the room. After he left, a visibly frustrated Pelosi told the group she would articulate what Biden had been trying to say…

That was October 2021. That month was the last time Biden met with the House Democratic caucus on the Hill regarding legislation. 

That was October 2021.

Biden - who spent more than 35 years as a senator - stopped meeting with his allies on Capitol Hill less than a year into his term. He stopped having full Cabinet meetings in 2023.

Other stories emerged too, of Biden unable to recognize lawmakers he had known for years, of conferences scripted to the minute and the question, of a man who seemed to slide in and out of consciousness during meetings.

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(The news you need. The truth you need more.)

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Whether Joe Biden should serve out his Presidency is a pointless question.

Fewer than six months remain until Inauguration Day. The Democrats are not going to try to remove him, and they would need to participate actively in any effort to do so. Republicans will focus their energies on electing Trump and J.D. Vance.

But whether Joe Biden should have run for a second term - and whether the people around him, including Kamala Harris, should have allowed him to do so - is a question with a very definite answer.

The answer is no.

Had Americans seen the full extent of his decline, they would have resoundingly rejected his bid. Of course Biden and the people closest to him were well aware of this fact, which is why they went to such great lengths to hide it.

This is more than a tragedy; it is a Presidential scandal at least as serious as Watergate, an unforgivable stain on Joe Biden’s record.

Just as the first sentence of Nixon’s 1994 obituary in The New York Times explained he “was the only President in more than two centuries of American history to resign from office,” so too should the first sentence of Biden’s obituaries-to-come point out he was the only President to be forced to quit a reelection bid because of concerns he had hidden his cognitive decline.

But Biden is a Democrat, and the media was complicit, and questions about the last few months will be very awkward for Harris, so the gaslighting has already begun.

Don’t fall for it.

Hold on the truth.

Joe Biden was the opposite of a hero.

1. Let’s assume the theories of palace coups are incorrect and that Biden himself did make the decision to withdraw, though as of now, two full days after the announcement, he has not appeared in public to confirm that fact.