Gaslight: 4 Times the Media Tried to Tell You Biden’s Health Wasn’t a Problem

The longtime media and Democratic Party gaslighting over President Joe Biden’s health decline has finally imploded.

The mask fully came off Thursday night as the narrative about Biden being A-OK collapsed in an excruciating 90-minute “debate” with former President Donald Trump.

By now, you’ve likely at least seen some video clips of it, so I won’t belabor the point. It was nothing less than a debacle for Biden and his Democratic allies. The Big Lie about the president’s health has been completely exposed, and it’s virtually impossible to hide that truth from the American people now.

Adding to the realization that Biden likely isn’t running the White House and that we have a president in name only is the complete reversal of the vast media messaging machine.

If you had been listening only to corporate and left-wing media for the past four years, you would think that Biden was just fine. Any story about his physical and mental decline was deemed false, just a mean-spirited Republican talking point.

Sure, the president is a little slower now, but that means he has more wisdom. Age is Biden’s superpower!

One night changed a whole lot.

You could see in real time during the debate as the gears of the Democratic-media complex ground to a halt and reversed course.

There’s just no way to deny what everyone saw Thursday without a total loss of credibility.

Suddenly all those media outlets and talking heads have to just roll with the painfully obvious truth that Biden appears to be in severe age-related mental decline.

More than a few Democratic commentators are now openly talking about how Biden needs to be replaced at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket. Isn’t it interesting how the party that always insists it’s fighting for “our democracy” is willing to jettison the nominee through elite-led machinations at the upcoming nominating convention?

I don’t know how they will wiggle out of this crisis. It’s certainly one of their own making. Maybe they shouldn’t have lied to Democratic voters and the American people over the past five years.

Before the full flip to “actually, Biden is unwell; let’s replace him with candidate X” becomes the dominant story—or they all just slip back into denial mode after Biden refuses to step aside—here, for the record, is a quick retrospective on some notable media gaslighting incidents since the first of the year. 

1. Joe Scarborough Says Biden’s Better Than Ever

MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough said in March that Biden has reached a final, magnificent form. Biden’s not just cogent, he said, but “intellectually, analytically” better than ever.

And here he is Friday, sounding like he’s reading Biden’s obituary.

2. Paul Krugman: Democracy Too Important to Think About Biden’s Health

In February, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote a pleading article begging the media to pay absolutely no attention to Biden’s health—which Krugman said is fine, immaculate even.

Krugman wrote that “hand-wringing over Biden’s age has overshadowed the real stakes in the 2024 election.” He then blasted special counsel Robert Hur for saying in his report about Biden mishandling classified documents that the president is a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

The New York Times columnist then wrote that we should just trust him when he says Biden is totally fine.

There’s perception and there’s reality: As anyone who has recently spent time with Biden (and I have) can tell you, he is in full possession of his faculties—completely lucid and with excellent grasp of detail. Of course, most voters don’t get to see him up close, and it’s on Biden’s team to address that.

Here’s Krugman on Friday.

But it’s not just Krugman. Look at the entire Times editorial page now:

 3. N.Y. Times Reporters: Video of Biden Looking Bad ‘Misleading’

It wasn’t just liberal commentators who have been covering for Biden. News reports from corporate media outlets have joined in on the spin that questions about Biden’s health are fake news—or in the newspeak parlance—“cheap fakes.”

Less than a week before the debate, this was The New York Times’ headline on a piece about all those crazy videos of Biden seemingly out to lunch that you might have seen: “How Misleading Videos Are Trailing Biden as He Battles Age Doubts.”

Here’s the subheadline on the piece, which is also a subtle but no less absurd spin: “A flurry of recent clips, many of them edited or lacking context, laid bare a major challenge for the president as he tries to persuade voters he has the energy for a second term.”

Again, don’t let your lying eyes deceive you. Don’t you dare watch those videos without the contextualizers telling you how to think. There’s nothing to see here. These are just “challenges” for the president to overcome.

4. AP ‘Fact Checks’ Biden’s Freeze at Fundraiser

Here’s a piece from an Associated Press reporter who has been put on the “contextualize all the videos of Biden looking awful” beat.

She attempts to correct the record on an incident in which Biden appears to freeze on stage during a Democratic fundraiser before former President Barack Obama leads him off the stage by the arm as if he’s a child.

This is the best she could come up with:

“CLAIM: Biden froze onstage during his fundraiser in Los Angeles on Saturday night and had to be led away by Obama.

“THE FACTS: Biden paused amid cheers and applause as he exited the stage with his predecessor following an interview moderated by late-night host [Jimmy] Kimmel.”

There’s nothing remarkable about this. But it fails to debunk what people saw in the video. It’s just a careful, bland, but subtly misleading rewrite of a story to obscure what the actual controversy was.

The story was posted on X by White House senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates, who wrote, “Rightwing cheap fakes keep being cut apart by nonpartisan fact checkers.”

Again, nothing here was debunked in any way. The article is virtually pointless, except as an example of how the media and Democratic Party tag team to serve as information gate-keepers.

If there’s a lesson to be learned with all this, it’s that the media will absolutely spin the most absurd narratives to ensure the Left remains in power.

The post Gaslight: 4 Times the Media Tried to Tell You Biden’s Health Wasn’t a Problem appeared first on The Daily Signal.