Presidentish Joe Biden’s reelection campaign is “addressing his age,” according to NBC News — by going to comical lengths to try and hide the fact that the octogenarian is increasingly frail, moody, and just plain weird.
“Addressing?” I would like to say to NBC News in my best Inigo Montoya voice. “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
It’s an indicator of how cloistered this White House is, because according to the NBC News article, Team Biden didn’t realize just how bad their chief’s public appearances had become until he tripped — “hard,” as NBC put it — over a sandbag at last month’s Air Force Academy commencement. “Afterward,” Carol E. Lee, Peter Nicholas, and Monica Alba reported, “a few huddled to figure out what may have gone wrong and how to make sure that such an embarrassing and dangerous incident never happens again.'”
The NBC reporters continued, “Any misstep is bound to be magnified when voters are already prone to believe Biden should consider retirement.”
Welcome to the party, pal. In my best John McClain, of course. Some of us who aren’t in the mainstream media noticed in 2020 that Biden was campaigning from his basement precisely because he was in his senescence — a fact NBC News and all the rest helped conceal. The intervening three years have not been kind.
Flash forward to today. The first step in the White House’s Operation Mighty Joe Young is to keep Biden from walking up too many stairs. Instead of walking up the big red stairs to the main entrance of Air Force One, NBC says that “More and more, Biden is forgoing the long staircase for the shorter stairway that takes him up through the plane’s belly.” From there, aides strap him to a handcart that they must then fumble up the plane’s spiral staircase to the jet’s living quarters like Peter O’Toole in “My Favorite Year.”
I’m kidding about the hand truck.
Nevertheless, “In the weeks prior to tripping onstage, Biden used the shorter set of stairs to get on and off the presidential aircraft 37% of the time. In the past seven weeks he’s used them 84% of the time, or 31 out of the 37 times he’s gotten on and off the plane.”
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NBC is honest enough to admit that Biden now uses an “extra-large font on his teleprompter and note cards to remind him of the points he wants to make in meetings.” Yet NBC somehow failed to mention that Biden still fumbles his way through his note cards — particularly with Israeli president Isaac Herzog last week — and that his so-called press conferences include scripted questions presented by approved reporters.
Some might argue that what NBC has done here is nothing new. Way back when, the press aided the Roosevelt White House in at least two ways regarding FDR’s health. First, for more than a dozen years, they played along with efforts to conceal the fact that FDR had been crippled by polio. Second — and most despicably — the press actively concealed from the American public that by 1944, Roosevelt was at death’s door. This was during a war and an election year. There’s no denying what lengths the American infotainment complex will go to protect powerful Democrats. Similarly, JFK’s extracurricular activities got whitewashed, too. There was no hiding Bill Clinton’s antics but the press happily framed him as a lovable rogue, instead.
But this isn’t 1943 or 1963 or even 1993. The ubiquity of smartphones and social media makes it impossible to hide that Biden just doesn’t have the physical and mental stamina for the job, right down to ditching important diplomatic events like he did recently in Europe.
Instead, today’s article is more like a Nixonesque “modified limited hangout.” While conceding that Biden is indeed old, the report omits vital facts and ends on an upbeat note. NBC quotes former Labor Secretary Marty Walsh recalling that “If you’ve ever given him a hug, you’re going to feel the man is solid. He’s in good shape.” NBC also reminds readers that “Any president can forget a name or place, mangle a sentence or tumble over a tripping hazard.”
True enough. But how many stare dead-eyed at the huge font on the teleprompter as they barely mumble their way through the words?
But back to my point, which is this: NBC can’t hide Biden’s age, but they can spin it as nothing more concerning than the occasional flub that his staff is dealing with before those nasty Republicans can pounce once more. But he’s up to the job, really he is.
“All is well,” they insist, in their best Chip Diller voice.
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