Welcome back. I loved meeting some of you at the San Francisco debate, where I handed out VIP wristbands to anyone who complimented my cropped trousers—which in SF is as close as we get to shorts—or who brought a book for me to sign (any book, I just like being asked to write my name). Let’s turn to the news.
→ The Biden aging cover-up: There’s a big new book out by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson on how Biden World covered up Biden’s senility, and nuggets from it have dominated the headlines all week. Biden’s campaign staged a simple town hall to get some good clips of him talking, and he couldn’t even muster coherent lines; members of Biden’s cabinet wouldn’t see him for months at a time; Hunter Biden was effectively “the chief of staff” for the Biden family. (Commander, the German shepherd, ran our Navy.)
Biden’s deterioration was profound, was visible as early as 2019, and was systematically hidden by a media that simply wanted to guzzle and regurgitate propaganda. Biden’s inner circle reportedly couldn’t believe how easily the mainstream media swallowed campaign lies, with one anonymous insider saying: “We were sort of amazed at some of the stuff we were able to spin. You guys should not have believed us so easily.”
And wow, did the media fall for the Biden White House spin. They loved it!
CNN blasted: “Fact check: Trump campaign runs ads falsely accusing Biden of using teleprompter.” The Associated Press writes confidently: “Biden did not use teleprompter to answer reporters’ questions.” Jen Psaki in 2021: “I can tell you, having traveled with him a fair amount, sometimes he’s hard to keep up with.” Well, maybe when he’s being pushed in his chair by a younger staffer. Here’s The New York Times in 2023: “Yet people who deal with him regularly, including some of his adversaries, say he remains sharp and commanding in private meetings. . . . He has at times exhibited striking stamina.” Hot. He’s literally Benson Boone, a virile, strapping man so fit it’s impossible for any woman to match the pace of his stride, according to the paper of record. He did a cartwheel, you just missed it. All videos showing what you think is a totally zonked old man are actually “cheap fakes.” (Remember that? Real video, but bad vibes, so the media called ‘em cheap fakes.) People have collected more greatest mainstream hits if you like that kind of thing. Here are all the good and trusted talking heads tearing into Special Counsel Robert Hur, for example, for having the audacity to suggest Biden was pretty out of it.
Some of the book tour has been profoundly uncomfortable. Here’s Tapper: “Alex and I are here to say that conservative media was right and conservative media was correct and that there should be a lot of soul-searching, not just among me, but among the legacy media.” It’s the kind of self-flagellation that would make Opus Dei proud.