By Becket Adams
Sunday, September 10, 2023
President Joe Biden had an uncharacteristically self-aware moment in 2022.
As we learn from Franklin Foer, an Atlantic staff writer whose new book is The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future, the moment came not long after the president casually endorsed regime change in Russia. During a speech in Poland, Biden remarked that, “for God’s sake, [Putin] cannot remain in power.” The White House was swift to walk back the unscripted comment, much to Biden’s reported chagrin.
“Rather than own his failure,” writes Foer, Biden “fumed to friends about how he was treated like a toddler. Was John Kennedy ever babied like that?”
On this point, the president is correct: His aides do treat him as if he were a child. So, too, does the corporate press, lowering ever further its expectations of basic competency and ignoring or rationalizing shortcomings it would condemn if displayed by nearly any other president.
The irony of Biden’s alleged grumbling is that he profits enormously from being babied. Indeed, his abysmal approval ratings are likely buoyed somewhat by the press’s overly friendly, largely uncritical, and oftentimes deferential news coverage. Were the press not in the habit of putting a shine on Biden’s failures, all while ignoring his near-total lack of foreign and domestic accomplishments, you’d likely see a president with an approval rating in the teens. Foer, however, disagrees with this assessment. In fact, appearing on NBC News’ Meet the Press, he went so far as to say that the press has probably been “tougher” on Biden than “he deserves.” Host Chuck Todd had pressed Foer to expound on the Biden administration’s belief that its lousy approval numbers can be explained by poor messaging and an overly critical news media.
“Every President who suffers an upside-down approval rating is going to moan about the media,” Foer said, “and I think that there is some truth to it in [Biden’s] case where Trump caused the media to go become so emotional, to get so engaged in covering all the high drama.”
He continued (emphasis my own), “And I think with the Biden administration, there’s been this desire on the part of the press to reassert its standards of objectivity. So, I think on certain measures, [Biden’s] probably right. He has been covered probably tougher than he deserves.”
Beg pardon?
This just doesn’t jibe with reality. In case after case, one can see that the newsrooms are especially gentle with Biden, certainly gentler than they’d ever be with a Republican president. And in the rare cases when media have been tough on Biden, it has been both appropriately measured and deserved, the coverage neither unfair nor uncalled for.
To the first point, in which media have been overly kind to Biden, one need not look far for examples. Biden, like his predecessor, is a chronic liar, prone to spewing the most absurd and pathologically self-serving falsehoods. But where, say, the New York Times had no problem identifying former president Trump’s lies as lies, it claims of Biden’s fraught relationship with the truth that he’s simply the “storyteller in chief” who “spins yarns.” Where the Washington Post claimed in 2020 to have compiled 20,000 “false or misleading statements” made by Trump during his presidency (making for a not particularly believable average of 23 “false or misleading statements” per day), the same newspaper saw fit in 2021 to shutter its presidential fact-checker — despite the fact that the incoming Democratic president rather infamously lost his first bid for the Oval Office under the cloud of an impressive body of lies.
Biden is notoriously short-tempered, ill-mannered, and tasteless. Those who have been unfortunate enough to have collaborated with or interacted with him either in the United States Senate, in the White House, or on the campaign trail can attest to this. More recently, Gold Star families and veterans have gone on the record to accuse the president of having treated them with indifference or callousness; some found the commander in chief’s behavior to be downright insulting. But the way the press corps has told it for the past 15 years, Biden is a lovable, kindly, “empathetic” grandpa.
Curiously enough, evidence that Biden is the empathetic person we keep hearing about never materializes in these op-eds and news reports. We’re simply asked to accept the assertion as fact. We’re also asked to ignore the part where Biden’s “empathy” mostly involves inserting himself into whatever tragedy is leading the news cycle that week with fabricated stories of personal hardship.
Then, of course, there’s the hand-waving that goes into downplaying various Biden scandals, most notably that damned Hunter Biden laptop. Major newsrooms opted initially to parrot intelligence-agency stooges, who insisted the laptop was likely the product of a nefarious Kremlin plot. Later, Biden himself cited these stooges when he claimed during a presidential debate that the laptop was probably Russian disinformation. Hunter Biden confirmed later that the laptop was indeed real and his own. The president also claimed repeatedly during the 2020 election that he had “never discussed” with his son “anything having to do with [his] businesses. Period.” Evidence has since emerged proving that the elder Biden has indeed interacted with his son’s business partners. Biden also claimed his son had “not made money” dealing with China. Hunter admitted recently that he received money from Chinese interests.
Despite the Bidens’ constantly shifting version of events, the Washington Post saw fit to publish the following headline — over a news article — in June, long after the first denials were shown to be lies: “The complicated relationship between a presidential father and a struggling son.”
These are just a few examples of the press pulling its punches for Biden. There’s much more where this comes from, but you get the picture.
Now, as for the times that the media have been tough on Biden, one would be hard pressed to characterize these moments as particularly unfair. The press was tough on Biden during the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Deservedly so. Newsrooms were also critical of Biden’s nonchalant response to the wildfires in Maui. Deservedly so. None of this coverage was what one would call “harsh.” Biden behaved poorly in both situations — poorly enough that an otherwise compliant press couldn’t help but demand accountability.
Foer is plain wrong about Biden’s relationship with the press. It’s not combative. It’s positively chummy, except for the rare instances where Biden’s overwhelming incompetence and boorishness have prompted even newsrooms to question whether he understands the seriousness of his office. That’s not being “covered probably tougher than he deserves.” It’s the opposite.
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