Media Caught Protecting Biden

They knew. They all knew.

“I’m shocked, shocked to find out that gambling is going on in here.”

So remarked Captain Renault in the movie Casablanca as he ordered a raid of Humphrey Bogart’s famous Rick’s Café. As soon as those words left the policeman’s mouth, a casino worker handed him cash: “your winnings, sir.”

Similarly, since Biden’s disastrous debate last Thursday, media mavens gush with purported alarm as they feign actual surprise and even indignation at the cognitive condition of the man who’s supposed to function as America’s commander-in-chief. Like Captain Renault, these protestations from the Fourth Estate ring hollow, and will surely only further exacerbate the trend of lost credibility for the corporate media.

I know these charlatans better than most. In fact, I may be the only person in America who’s worked as a paid broadcaster for the top four cable news networks. Believe me…however little you think of the corporate media, you don’t deride them enough.

For example, Axios national reporter Alex Thompson took to CNN’s airwaves after the channel hosted the Biden debacle. He actually tried to tell the audience that the condition of Biden was “new news” for him and others who cover the White House.

Here was his inane statement:

"Well, listen, I’ve covered the Biden White House now for three-and-a-half years, and as someone that’s reported on his age quite a few times, I can tell you that the White House's response every single time that it's come up for three-and-a-half years has been to deflect, to gaslight, to not tell the truth, not just to reporters, not just to other Democrats, but even at times to themselves about the president’s limitations at his age."

Of course, any real journalist could use his own eyes and ears to observe Biden over the last three-and-a-half years, particularly in impromptu, off-teleprompter moments. There is hardly some dearth of revealing and embarrassing moments wherein Biden has totally exposed his own cognitive issues. His muddled speech, meandering messages, empty gazes, and shuffled walks all reveal a man who is not fit to run a small business, much less handle the most important and difficult job in the world.

But even beyond simple objective observation, a real journalist would never accept the “party line” pronouncements of the White House, and instead dig deeper to find out the reality about Biden’s condition, especially off camera. The Wall Street Journal did, in fact, pursue just this kind of skeptical, vigorous journalism just before the debate meltdown. Their article, “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping,” was a rare moment of real journalism from the legacy media.

Of course, the WSJ reporting was predictably met with either avoidance or dismissal by the complicit and corrupt mainstream media. For example, CNN’s supposed fact-checker, Oliver Darcy, published a response titled “The Wall Street Journal’s Story About Biden’s Mental Acuity Suffers from Glaring Problems.”

Similarly, the Jeff Bezos Washington Post obediently parroted Karine Jean Pierre’s ridiculous pre-debate framing of embarrassing videos about Biden as so-called “cheap fakes.” WaPo actually claimed that video editing allowed “Biden’s opponents to take innocuous moments and turn them into attacks on his mental acuity or physical fitness.”

Well, 50 million Americans saw the debate that unmasked the brutal truth about Biden’s cognitive state. Here is an additional harsh truth: every sentient individual who works full-time in political media knew completely about Biden’s issues.

They knew. They all knew.

But almost all of the incorrigibly biased activists who masquerade as journalists chose to either ignore this reality or, worse, helped spread the propaganda that Biden is just fine.

As Glenn Greenwald noted, this complicity hardly represents the first such Trump era propaganda campaign joining the corporate media with the ruling class. Other important large scales hoaxes that involved this nefarious alliance include the Russian collusion narrative, the Charlottesville “very fine people” hoax, and concealing the evidence of the “Laptop from Hell.”

Getting back to Captain Renault from Casablanca, perhaps the present-day DC version of that corrupt Moroccan police officer is Biden’s former Director of Communications Kate Bedingfield. She actually claimed, post-debate, that the “race has not fundamentally changed.”

Well, Miss Bedingfield, there is gambling at Rick’s! Also, this 2024 race has changed fundamentally. In addition to inflation and immigration, a third “I” topic is now clearly added to the mix: Biden’s incapacity.

In fact, that issue cannot even wait for the November plebiscite, because his performance at the debate was so utterly alarming that he cannot reasonably serve out his current term -- and forget about another four years. More on that topic of the new national security crisis in coming articles, but for now recognize the collapse of remaining credibility for the corporate media that lied about a totally impaired president.

Steve Cortes is former senior advisor to President Trump, former commentator for Fox News and CNN, and president of the League of American Workers, a populist right pro-laborer advocacy group.