RUTHFULLY YOURS

The reaction to Jake Tapper’s and Alex Thompson’s book about how the White House “hid” Joe Biden’s mental decline has been brutal – and fittingly so. But their book inadvertently reveals something even worse about today’s corporate journalists.

Tapper and Thompson would have us believe that they were shocked! shocked! to discover that Biden was suffering serious and worsening mental infirmities while president, because the White House had so expertly hidden them. And that it was only through their intrepid reporting that the truth can now be told.

This is laughable on its face.

The stories the authors recount were all known by journalists all along. How else could they have churned out a book in a matter of months after Biden left office? Every story in that book, every one, was known to White House reporters who diligently refused to report them at the time. That includes “revelations” in the book such as that:

A small, tight-knit group in former President Joe Biden’s inner circle was running the White House like a ‘politburo,’ and they were the ‘ultimate decision-makers’ as Biden’s health and cognitive function continued to decline.

Tapper himself was one of the worst offenders. Just watch any of the long and damning collection of clips circulating on social media, like the one below, showing Tapper parroting White House talking points.

What’s amazing about it all is that even as they were covering for Biden, reporters knew the public wasn’t buying their spin. Polls consistently showed that vast majorities of the public were concerned about Biden’s mental infirmities. Our latest I&I/TIPP poll, which we will report on Wednesday, finds that by a stunning 2-to-1 margin, Americans agree that the media covered up former Biden’s mental infirmities.

So, every attempt to downplay or ignore Biden’s cognitive incapacity served only to diminish the corporate media’s trustworthiness. But that was the price they were willing to pay to protect their guy.

What’s so ludicrous about Tapper and Thompson’s book is that they want to regain their credibility by saying that they — professional journalists — were more gullible and more easily duped than your average Joe. “We aren’t corrupt, just incompetent,” is their defense.

But what struck us most is a quote from the book – which we have not and will not buy – describing how the White House put the kibosh on a story questioning Biden’s mental acuity in late May 2024.

Here’s how Fox News describes it:

The book details one specific instance of the White House successfully killing a story when, ‘weeks’ before the explosive Wall Street Journal story detailing concern about Biden’s decline came out in June, Steve Ricchetti, former White House deputy chief of staff, strongly denied claims that the president was slipping to another journalist.

‘[A] reporter with a different national news outlet had been hearing from White House aides that behind the scenes the president was having serious and disturbing moments, forgetting names and facts, sometimes seeming seriously confused at meetings,’ the book read.

‘The reporter reached out to members of the White House press office, which not only aggressively—and angrily—disputed her reporting but also took the unusual step of having Steve Ricchetti call her,’ the book said. ‘He talked to her off the record, so she couldn’t use any of what he said or even attribute it to “a White House source.” But he told her that everything the others were saying was false, and that he was at the meetings as a counselor to the president.’

According to Tapper and Thompson, the Biden White House was going all out trying to control the perception of his health.

‘The message from the White House was clear, this reporter believed: If she went forward with the story from anonymous aides, the White House would aggressively dispute it, on the record, and portray her as a liar,’ the book reads. ‘The tacit threat worked.’

The tacit threat worked.

A tacit threat from the Biden White House was enough to get a “watchdog” reporter to turn tail and run. No doubt, a major contributing factor was the reporter knowing that no other mainstream journalist would back her up.

In fact, after that Wall Street Journal article came out, Tapper devoted himself to debunking it, as the new clips above show.

Contrast that with the same corporate media’s reporting on Trump – or any Republican for that matter.

Does anyone believe that a “tacit threat” from the Trump White House would dissuade a reporter from running a story based on anonymous sources?

Anyone … ? Bueller … ?

Quite the contrary. The flimsiest and most far-fetched stories that make Trump look bad, that are based entirely on anonymous sources, that the White House vociferously disputes, and that more often than not turn out to be completely bogus, get front-page treatment. Then they get picked up by every other corporate news outlet, shouted about on social media, and cried about by celebrities and late-night talk show hosts, until every American has heard the tale.

When these Trump stories turn out to be false, the press either buries that fact or doesn’t bother updating their readers. (A journalistic crime for which no one is ever held accountable, which will further bury their reputation. Our I&I/TIPP poll finds that 84% of those who believe the media covered up Biden’s infirmities also said it was important to hold the media accountable for doing so.)

So, what we have, by their own admission, are “mainstream” news types who will dance to whatever tune their masters in the Democratic Party play, no matter how much damage it does to their own reputations.

There’s a term for this sort of profession, and it isn’t “journalist.”