HEATHER MAC DONALD: The Times Turns on a Dime.

To measure the terror now gripping the mainstream media in the wake of the Biden–Trump debate, consider this: the New York Times is now fact-checking Joe Biden in favor of Donald Trump.

Monday’s print edition of the Times contains an article titled “In ABC Interview, Exaggerations about Polling and Trump.” The article applies a level of scrutiny to Biden’s Friday interview with ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos that is nearly unprecedented toward a Democratic candidate.

The Times now quotes Biden verbatim, with the clear intention of putting his verbal shuffles on full display:

Biden: “After that debate, . . . I did events in—in—in Georgia, did events like this today, large crowds, overwhelming response, no—no—no slipping.”

So remorseless is the Times toward Biden’s speech stumbles that it even records a missing syllable:

“The New York Times had me behind before anything having to do with this race—had me hind—behind 10 points.”

CNN’s Jake Tapper was also pointing out Biden’s fractured speech patterns in his interview with Stephanopoulos in the video we posted earlier today, gaffes that the media ignored for over four years.

So what happens if Biden manages to ride out the ever-growing calls to leave the race? Mac Donald writes:

On Monday, Biden sent what the Times characterizes as a “defiant” letter to Congress, daring his Democratic critics to challenge him at the convention. He also delivered what the Times calls “fiery remarks” on MSNBC denouncing the skeptical “elites.”  Until Biden bows before the inevitable, we can expect to live in an inverted reality in which the mainstream media applies the same journalistic standards to the Democratic frontrunner as it does to the Republican frontrunner. As soon as Biden withdraws, we will return to the status quo ante.

Or as Kyle Smith wrote in March of 2019, “When he became veep, any attack on Biden risked looking like casting aspersions on the man who made him his number two, and the media could not countenance any naysaying about the judgment of the Precious. For the next few months, though, we’re in an amusing interstitial period when the media actually has a reason to attack their fellow Democrats: any hacks out there who think their party can do better than Biden (or Sanders, or Warren, or Harris, or etc.) can rip into their disfavored candidates in order to give an assist to their preferred picks. All of this goes away as soon as the Democratic pick for 2020 becomes evident, but until then we’ll be seeing some actual vigorous reporting.”