WATCH: Joe Biden’s Senior Moments (We Told You So Edition).
Jan Crawford of CBS News said last week that Biden’s “obvious cognitive decline” was the most “underreported” story of the year. Liberal journalist Matt Yglesias conceded that his prediction that Biden would “prove his doubters wrong” at the now-infamous CNN debate in June 2024 did not pan out. “In a lot of ways it’s more embarrassing to have been gullible and wrong when so many people with no sources and no inside info could see it clearly, but that’s what happened,” Yglesias wrote, pretentiously.
Well, we tried to warn you. The Washington Free Beacon was neither gullible nor wrong in our assessment of Biden’s health, and we didn’t need “sources” or “inside info” to tell us what we could see very clearly with our own eyes. We launched a weekly video series documenting Biden’s “senior moments” back in July 2022, nearly two years before he bragged about beating Medicare on the debate stage. We sounded the alarm in April 2022, when Biden shook hands with a ghost, and again in September 2022, when he tried to converse with a dead congresswoman, and again in October 2023, when he froze at the podium, and on numerous other occasions.
Chuck Schumer however, is determined to go down swinging: Schumer: ‘We Didn’t’ Mislead the American Public About Biden’s Cognitive Decline.
[NBC’s Meet the Press host Kristen] Welker asked, “What do you say that you and top Democrats misled them about President Biden’s mental acuity?”
Schumer said, “Look, we didn’t. Let’s look at President Biden. he’s had an amazing record. The legislation we passed, one of the most significant groups of legislation since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, putting 235 judges of record. He’s a patriot. He’s a great guy, and when he stepped down he did it on his own because he thought it was better not only for the Democratic Party for America, we should all salute him. We should all salute him.”
The question about misleading the American public about Biden’s declining mental acuity could also be asked about NBC, of course:
The story revolved around Biden and other world leaders being greeted by a skydiving demonstration last Thursday at the Group of Seven meeting in Italy. Video shows Biden walking away from the leaders and toward a group of parachutists who had just landed, giving them two thumbs-up.
But conservative media outlets and the Republican National Committee posted videos shot from angles that cut out the parachutists. Some of their posts said incorrectly that Biden “wandered off.” Without the skydivers Biden was addressing included in those videos, viewers could be left with the impression that he was walking absentmindedly.
The misleading videos were an example of so-called cheap fakes, in which low-tech editing or other minor changes to videos, along with incorrect context, can amplify false but convincing messages.
The episode illustrated the dynamics of the new information ecosystem, in which tech platforms are hesitant to emphasize vetted, factual information during an election year for fear of appearing partisan — even as partisan operatives take advantage of the platforms’ attempts at neutrality.
—“The deceptive Biden G7 video was quickly debunked, but it kept going viral anyway,” NBC News, June 19th, 2024. Flash-forward a month later:
President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he will end his presidential re-election campaign, bringing an abrupt and humbling conclusion to his half-century-long political career and scrambling the race for the White House less than four months before Election Day.
Biden, 81, could not reverse growing sentiment within his party that he was too frail to serve and destined to lose to Donald Trump in November. He backed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him as the Democratic nominee.
—“President Joe Biden drops out of 2024 presidential race,” NBC News, July 21st, 2024.