All The President’s Gaslighters

In a recent Netflix documentary about Vietnam, Dan Rather makes a rather ironic observation considering the source as well as the shameful state of the mainstream media of which he was a part. “A free and independent, truly independent, media is the red beating heart of freedom and democracy.”

The messenger, however, does not necessarily negate the message. But what happens when the watchdogs of the State act as their lapdogs because their political and social interests are so aligned as to be indistinguishable?

Anyone with functioning senses could tell that from the beginning of his 2020 campaign, Joe Biden was not fully in command of his mental faculties. And it only got worse. And yet, when he announced his plans to run for a second term, those in the legacy media were more than willing to do their parts to ensure this incapacitated man should be the commander-in-chief of our armed forces and keeper of the nuclear codes for another four years.

That was until it all finally blew up on the debate stage in June 2024.

ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP via Getty Images

With Biden’s decay “settled science”, the media are now claiming in faux self-reflection that they “missed the story.” What was there to miss? It would be easier to “miss” a full solar eclipse. I even recall driving in my car with my daughter who heard one of Biden’s slurring, disjointed ramblings on an otherwise very Biden-friendly NPR broadcast. She observed matter-of-factly, “He sounds like Grandpa.” (Her grandfather was sadly suffering from severe cognitive decline as well as Parkinson’s by then.)

And yet, those who worked with Biden on a daily basis claimed that “behind the scenes” this bedazzled, vacuous man was, in reality, a whirlwind who was so energetic and on top of things it was an effort just to keep up with him. And the media willingly went along with the lies to hide that whoever was running the White House, it was not Joe Biden. And now they are paying the price in a collapse in confidence. According to Gallup, only 7% of respondents trust the media “a great deal” and just 24% a “fair amount.”

As pathetic as their attempts at gaslighting the public about their chosen president were at the time, what is even more pitiful now is their desperate attempt to cover up their own coverups, or gaslight us again…this time about themselves.

Peter Kramer/NBC via Getty Images

Consider Chuck Todd, former host of NBC’s Meet The Press, actually trying to pass the buck.

“This is not a media failure,” he insists. “This is a failure of the Democratic Party. And…the virtue signaling that some people have done to try to say that the media missed this story, they didn’t miss this story.” His defensive rant concludes: “This is an attempt by some to virtue signal, and it’s this horrible sort of pitting different news organizations against each other, when ultimately, the people at fault are Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Jill Biden, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, every elected member of Congress!”

What is fascinating about Todd’s deflecting the blame is not just the shameless denial on display, but more importantly, what it reveals about the ethos of the mainstream media today. He claims this was a “failure of the Democratic Party.” In other words, what Todd is saying here is that the Democrats are to blame because the narrative they fed him, to then feed to us, was bogus. But it is not the job of the press to blindly accept and pass on what they are told by those in power. It is the media’s job to challenge the State narrative by investigating the truth outside the White House Press Secretary’s prepared remarks. Especially when the lies were so blatant regarding the mental decline of the President of the United States.

In his effort to defend the media, Todd has, in fact, indicted it for the crime of being nothing more than a reliable conduit for State propaganda. He is right in that the legacy media did not “miss” this story. They were fully aware of Biden’s crumbling brain. (Unless they are the worst reporters since Ron Burgundy). They just deliberately chose to ignore, downplay, bury and gaslight it. The media, which has at least ten times the number of Democrats as Republicans in their ranks, ran cover for their favored party and benefactors in DC.

Todd’s unconvincing line of defense is not even as shameful as some media pundits who are today trying to cash in on the very scandal in which they were themselves active participants. CNN’s Jake Tapper, who now has the nerve to co-author a book about the Biden mental health cover-up, even though for years he carried tanker loads of water for this same man, berated Laura Trump in 2020 for questioning Biden’s cognitive abilities:

Jake Tapper: How do you think it makes little kids with stutters feel when they see you make a comment like that?

Laura Trump: First and foremost, I had no idea that Joe Biden ever suffered from a stutter. I think what we see on stage with Joe Biden, Jake, is very clearly a cognitive decline. That’s what I’m referring to. It makes me uncomfortable—

Jake Tapper: (with a dismissive smirk speaking over Trump): You have no, absolutely, you have no idea. It’s so amazing to me that, that…A cognitive decline?

Laura Trump: When you’re trying to tell me what I was suggesting was a stutter—

Jake Tapper: I think you were mocking his stutter. And I think you have absolutely no standing to diagnose somebody’s cognitive decline. I would think somebody in the Trump family would be more sensitive. People who do not have medical licenses diagnosing politicians from afar.

If you would like to see more evidence that being a Democrat means never having to say you’re sorry, feel free to read Jake’s new book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.” I wonder if he touches upon his own role in the scandal as witnessed above in his tell-all? Any bets? I hear he is now working on a book about selective amnesia.

Jemal Countess/Getty Images for The Atlantic

Tapper’s 2020 line of questioning also reveals another tactic the media used to aggressively run cover for the Biden brain melt. That was to deploy the “you’re not a neurologist” argument from authority fallacy. Because, you see, those knowledgeable in the field were quite satisfied with Biden’s mental acuity and dismissive of his advanced years.

According to The Hill, for example, Biden was, in fact, a “superager.” As late as January 2024 they wrote, “He has a family history of dementia-free longevity and there was no evidence of cognitive decline in his personal medical records…his medical records published in his years since taking office so far indicate no significant change in physical or mental health status has occurred.”

In 2020, Forbes even saw Biden’s “stutter” as a beacon of hope for others with this affliction…and that’s all it was. “President or not, it is Joe Biden’s resilience that positions him as a hope for young Americans with disabilities.”

Okay. I’m not a doctor or a shrink. But like many Americans, including I have no doubt more than a few reading this, I have sadly seen what cognitive decline of an elderly loved one looks like up close and personal. Also, my father, who was exceptionally bright, had an actual stutter (for years I thought the state next to us was pronounced “I…I…Indiana”). So I know the difference between the two, thank you very much.

What the Democrat Party and mainstream/legacy media (but I repeat myself) tried to pull on the American people is nothing short of disgraceful. It took an old man’s very pathetic mental collapse in front of the world for the media to finally accept that the game was up. Up until the debate, for four years, day after day, week after week the press that Dan Rather calls democracy’s “red beating heart” never seriously challenged those DNC operatives who went before the cameras and declared him to be the “best Joe Biden ever” who was “sharp as a tack.” All to protect the interests of their own party, and thus their power

The media’s role in the Biden scandal reveals the true level of contempt with which the overly-educated, overly-credentialed, cloistered coastal elites who are now the prime drivers in the DNC-Media Complex hold the average American. That they thought they could literally go before us and tell us not to believe our own lyin’ eyes is both an expression of astounding intellectual hubris as well as a demonstration of how insular they have become.

And they paid for this hubris at the polls in November. Despite their best efforts at using deception to protect their political party’s hold on power, the red-capped, flannel-wearing, beer-swilling, fast-food eating, knuckle-dragging Joe Punchclock rubes saw through the psyop. As such, their people are now in charge of the White House, the Senate, the House, hold a 6-3 majority in the Supreme Court and control the majority of governors mansions and state legislatures, while the Democrat Party polls in the mid-twenty percent and trust in their legacy media bagmen is at an all-time low. And that is no lie.

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Brad Schaeffer is a commodities fund manager, author, and columnist whose articles have appeared on the pages of The Daily Wire, The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Daily News, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, Zerohedge, and other outlets. He is the author of three books. Follow him on Substack and X/Twitter.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.