Which Way, American Journalist?

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Wednesday, February 26, 2025

 

I see that we have the first tell-all book on “President Biden’s decline,” and the “cover-up” that followed. It’s by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. I expect that I’ll be annoyed by most of these books — which, in their schizophrenia, will remind me of nothing more salubrious than O.J. Simpson’s If I Did It — but I’ll reserve judgment on this one, given that, unlike the majority of his peers, Alex Thompson spent the first half of 2024 telling the truth about Joe Biden, and the second half of 2024 telling the truth about Kamala Harris. If anyone in the mainstream press has earned the right to report on Biden’s decline, it’s Thompson.

 

As for everyone else? They can shove it. Since last summer, I have talked to a good number of people who nominally work as “reporters,” and they have told me that they were genuinely “blindsided” by the White House. This, they seem to think, lets them off the hook — or even makes them the victims. I’ve never bought this for a moment. First off, I simply don’t believe a lot of them. If I could discern Biden’s condition, why couldn’t they? Heck, if supermajorities of American voters could see it, why couldn’t they? I daresay that the executive branch has some power to keep journalists off the scent. But this wasn’t exactly a classified secret or a complicated story or a detailed issue that required access. It was right there before our eyes — for three years straight. If you were fooled, it was because, at some level, you wanted to be fooled.

 

Perhaps journalists are just idiots? That’s certainly plausible. What is not plausible, however, is the implied claim that this story was treated like any other, and that the Biden administration was simply able to stay one step ahead. Over the last decade, we have learned two things beyond any doubt: (1) that if the media wants to believe or promulgate a story, as it did with the Russiagate hoax, it will do so irrespective of where the evidence stands; (2) that, when it is determined to make a splash, someone will do so without reference to the niceties of the trade. In 2012, David Corn secretly recorded a private Mitt Romney fundraiser and then released the audio. Where was the David Corn of the Biden-is-senile cycle? Was he busy that administration?

 

I hear a lot of defenses of the press’s reticence that boil down to, “Well, that was off the record.” And that’s fine, as far as it goes. But, while important, those rules do not require their adherents to attack anyone who says what they privately know or suspect to be true — as was common practice every single time someone here at National Review said that Biden was too old to be president — and they do not prevent them from writing the “on background” stories that, when a Republican is the subject, suddenly become de rigueur. At this stage, the only person in America who believes that the media faithfully follows a series of neutral rules is Brian Stelter — and he’s paid to say as much.

 

Which is to say that my view of the affair remains exactly the same as it was in the immediate aftermath of the presidential debate that tore away the curtain: There is simply no way of looking at this “failure” that does not indict everyone involved. If the press genuinely did not know, then it is staffed by people who cannot see what is in front of their noses. If the press had suspicions but did not want to investigate them for fear that it would help Donald Trump, then it is staffed by people who are corrupt and who ought never to work again as a result. And if the press knew, but felt pressured or obliged to stay quiet about it, then we are dealing with a conspiracy of world-historic proportions. I do not know what is in Tapper and Thompson’s book, but if it is not primarily an indictment of the media — coupled with some white-hot rage at the federal government for having orchestrated such a dastardly conspiracy — then it will represent a missed opportunity. At present, the media’s approval rating is about 20 percent. If, over the next two years, the press elects to forget its complicity in the ruse and dispassionately cash in on its own failure, I suspect that its popularity will soon be pushing single digits — if that.