WHEN YOU’RE AN ESTABLISHMENT LEFTIST WHO’S LOST MAUREEN DOWD: Joe Biden, in the Goodest Bunker Ever.

Biden’s word salad and sudden drops in volume to pianissimo are relevant for reporters to cover because they’re a microcosm of the questions at the heart of the 2024 Democratic campaign: Is the president’s mental state strong enough to beat Donald Trump and can he serve for four more years? The desperate Biden team is ready to go to war over every syllable.

In my Saturday column, I quoted Biden’s line to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, about how he would feel if Trump were sworn in as president because he refused to step aside: “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.”

Now, “goodest” isn’t a word. But my researcher, Andrew Trunsky, and I listened to the video, our ears up against the computer, 10 times, and that’s what it sounded like. We also checked the ABC News transcript and that’s the word they used. Times news reporters and reporters for other news outlets took their cue from the ABC transcript.

The confusion was so universal that on Axios Saturday, there were two different versions: Mike Allen’s newsletter used “goodest” and another story used “I did as good a job as I know I can do.”

After my column posted Saturday morning, T.J. Ducklo, a Biden campaign spokesman, emailed me to “flag” that ABC News had updated its transcript to read: “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.”
Ducklo asked if I could “tweak” the column and change the word “goodest” to make my piece “consistent with the corrected transcript,” even though the revised version was also gobbledygook.

When I said we would tell our editor what he thought, Ducklo wrote back: “Yeah again, it’s not what I think. It’s what ABC News, who conducted the interview, thinks. I think it would be quite unusual if the Times asserted the president said something that the news organization who conducted the interview says he didn’t say …”

Andrew and I both emailed Ducklo, asking whether ABC had changed the transcript on its own or if the Biden team had asked them to change it.

“ABC News, like any news organization, makes their own independent editorial decisions,” Ducklo replied to us. “surely you are not suggesting otherwise.” He emailed again to add: “Had another convo on this. ABC News received the tape and confirmed the error to us. Then made the correction.”

I was more confused than ever. What tape? From whom?? Why the runaround??? Given the White House’s egregious coverup about Biden’s sag from aging, the spokesman’s coyness seemed de trop. By Saturday night, Shear and Michael Grynbaum had a Times story clearing up things. Indeed, the White House had asked ABC News to check whether the president said “goodest” or “good as,” after the White House stenographers, who had recorded the president on ABC News, noticed the discrepancy between their recording and the network’s transcript.

The Times attached notes on my column and all the news stories that had used “goodest,” explaining the befuddlement.
Whatever the president meant, his answer to that question went over like a lead balloon. No one cares if he feels good about himself in a losing cause.

It might seem like much ado about goodest. But it’s a harbinger of tense times between a White House in bunker mode and a press corps in ferret mode.

ABC’s transcript currently reads, “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about,” which still isn’t a form of English you and I speak — and it sure doesn’t sound like what Biden actually said:

BIDEN on how he'd feel after losing the election: "I'll feel, as long as I gave it my all, and I did the goodest job as I know I can do, that's what this is about." pic.twitter.com/PCQhQCSkga

— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) July 6, 2024

In any case, it speaks volumes that the post-debate, the DNC-MSM is finally dropping the pretense of protecting the old man, in-part because, as Jorge Bonilla wrote at NewsBusters on Friday night, “ABC Didn’t Get Their Campaign-Ending Moment.”

Or as Peppermint Psaki admitted on her Sunday MSNBC show, “when the interview ended, it ‘left us all in this sort of purgatory for the moment’ and said it ‘wasn’t a home run at all.'”