THE MOST UNDER-REPORTED STORY OF THE BIDEN PRESIDENCY:
In the last week or so, there has been a sudden burst of recognition of the extent to which Democrats and the media worked together to cover up Biden’s progressing cognitive decline. One media figure after another has come forward to call this the “most under-reported” story of the last year or several years. Some examples among many include: CBS correspondent Jan Crawford on December 30 (“That [the most under-reported story] would be, to me, Joe Biden’s obvious cognitive decline that became undeniable in a televised debate”); Rolling Stone, December 30 (“Matt Yglesias, Josh Barro, and Mehdi Hasan regret failing to acknowledge Biden’s cognitive decline sooner — and its impact on the 2024 election.”); MSN, January 4 (“Media facing backlash for reporting on Biden’s cognitive decline.”)
I agree that this was a very big and very under-reported story during the Biden presidency. But was it the biggest? Not to me. The biggest under-reported story of the Biden presidency was the President’s corruption.
The big difference between these two stories is that the cognitive decline story was much more difficult to cover up. Despite the best efforts of Biden’s staff to limit his appearances, restrict difficult questioning, and prevent all deviations from script, the President was still regularly out in the public eye. Even as every powerful Democrat insisted that Biden was “sharp as a tack,” we could all see him uttering confused answers to questions, mixing up his location, stumbling and falling, shaking hands with the air, and so forth. The refusal to take a simple cognitive test was a persistent tell. Yes, the left-wing media should be ashamed of their reporting; but they were not really able to fool anyone who was paying attention.
The corruption story was different. It takes some knowledge of the facts and the law to understand whether there is anything to an allegation of bribery. The mainstream media simply refused to provide the chronology of facts or a summary of the law to assist readers to understand the circumstances. As just a few examples:
As Karol Markowicz recently tweeted: