The Hollow Regret of Biden Coverage

An apology is better than no apology, but did it change you?

In all the post-election realignments and revelations, we are now getting a news cycle that I have always known would come sooner or later: The question of President Biden’s true mental and physical condition.

The projected impetus for this are two articles in last three days (from the New York Times and from the Wall Street Journal) that detail a Joe Biden who isn’t just currently frail but who has been half-present for the majority of his one-term presidency.

Horribly, this is not a huge surprise to most people.

Over two years ago, I wrote

It is incredibly odd to live in a time where I basically just don't believe we have a president but a group of nerds propping up a dude who will try to repeat the things they write onto cue cards.

This has been abundantly clear to everyone who is able to watch a video and make a independent judgement. Many liberals I’ve talked with over the last few years have sighed and admitted that they didn’t really think Biden was running the show.

Now that this view has become more formally validated, it has been met with a lot of “I told you so” on the right and some “wow, we were wrong” on the left.

From the “wow, we were wrong” camp comes this apology from Chris Cillizza, who covered the White House for CNN for two years of Biden’s presidency. I’ve watched the video and, while it provides some decent context, it misses the mark in a pretty substantial way.

Defeat the Press with Status Games

One important thing Cillizza brings up is that Biden surrogates discouraged the press from asking about the president’s condition by shaming them. They would basically say “how dare you” and put reporters on the defensive for even considering this line of inquiry.