How's the old adage go? "He who laughs last, laughs best"?
The fact that the Wall Street Journal isn't exactly president of the "President Donald Trump Fan Club" makes the point of this article even better — more relevant and a helluva lot more fun to write — vs. if my report were about Fox News, for instance.
Let's first cast our minds back to early June 2024.
The Wall Street Journal on June 4, 2024, published an explosive and controversial report on President Joe Biden's obvious cognitive decline, titled "Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping," with the subhead reading:
Participants in meetings said the 81-year-old president performed poorly at times. The White House said Biden is sharp and his critics are playing partisan politics.
That was putting it mildly, of course, but the article was tantamount to treason in the intentionally blind eyes and TDS-riddled minds of Biden fan-boy-fawning, left-wing media. It read, in part (emphasis, mine):
When President Biden met with congressional leaders in the West Wing in January to negotiate a Ukraine funding deal, he spoke so softly at times that some participants struggled to hear him, according to five people familiar with the meeting. He read from notes to make obvious points, paused for extended periods and sometimes closed his eyes for so long that some in the room wondered whether he had tuned out.
In a February one-on-one chat in the Oval Office with House Speaker Mike Johnson, the president said a recent policy change by his administration that jeopardizes some big energy projects was just a study, according to six people told at the time about what Johnson said had happened. Johnson worried the president’s memory had slipped about the details of his own policy.
Last year, when Biden was negotiating with House Republicans to lift the debt ceiling, his demeanor and command of the details seemed to shift from one day to the next, according to then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and two others familiar with the talks. On some days, he had loose and spontaneous exchanges with Republicans, and on others he mumbled and appeared to rely on notes.
As we all know, Biden's rare public appearances at the time also included the former president aimlessly shuffling around on a stage after delivering often-incoherent remarks, making comments about, or even to, deceased people as if they were still alive, and my favorite: promptly turning around and wandering into the Amazon jungle after making comments — only to be retrieved by a hovering aide.
So following the Journal's report, many of the usual hacks in the left-wing media came out swinging at the outlet — feverishly attempting to defend the indefensible notion that Biden was, in fact, mentally declining at a steady clip.
Embattled CNN host Jake Tapper — who now trots around the country shamelessly shilling for his controversial book, "Original Sin," smugly covered the Journal report by first emphasizing the White House's adamant denial (bald-faced lies) about what it called "false claims" from the article.
Even worse, Tapper trotted out Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) — whose undying defense of Biden and loathing of Trump couldn't be more obvious — to join in his baseless attack against the Journal's "partisan motives."
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Here's more, via Fox News:
Oliver Darcy, CNN's then-media reporter, erupted at the Journal, insisting its reporting "suffers from glaring problems," lecturing the paper it "owes its readers — and the public — better."
"It is difficult to imagine that the newspaper, or any outlet, would run a similar story declaring that Trump is ‘slipping’ behind the scenes based on the word of top Democratic figures — despite the fact that the Democratic leadership has demonstrated a much stronger relationship with the truth in recent years than their Republican counterparts," Darcy wrote.
"More broadly speaking, The Journal’s piece pointed to a continued problem roiling the news media as it covers the 2024 election. Trump is permitted to fall asleep in court and make nonsensical public statements on a routine basis without any serious questions raised about his mental acuity," the ex-CNN pundit continued. "Meanwhile, Biden is judged on an entirely different standard."
Darcy was unintentionally correct in one respect:
Biden was — and remains — judged on an entirely different standard than Trump, which is to say that Biden hasn't been judged by the Democrat lapdog media one iota — other than to endlessly deem the former president "sharp as a tack," along with other laughable lies.
Not to be outdone, MSNBC's “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough valiantly raced to Biden's defense, ridiculously call ing the Journal's report... wait for it... a "Trump hit piece!" — while his wife Mika Brzezinski sneered: “Why didn’t they just ask Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert?”
Then, leave it to CNN's Mr. Potato Head, Brian Stelter.
Stelter ignorantly pointed out (lied about) “a lot of flaws,” as noted by Fox, in the Journal report, while the ever-brilliant Joy Behar, co-host of ABC's cartoonish "The View," suggested America should actually be obsessing over Trump's mental acuity rather than worrying about Biden.
Meanwhile, The (formerly reputable) New York Times — ever the defender of "All the News That's Fit to Print" (left-wing media groupthink) — found wisdom in a monologue from CBS "The Late Show" host Stephen Colbert, the Fox News report noted, who summarily dismissed the Journal's report as "old news."
Oh, I almost forgot.
Jennifer Rubin, the impudent queen of what I like to call "irrational rationality," haughtily informed her no doubt equally smug readers that Biden's mumbles and stumbles, fits of confusion, and brain freezes didn't have a lick of relevance to his performance as president of the United States.
Then, "it" happened.
Little more than three weeks after the WSJ report dropped, a visibly dazed and totally confused Biden shuffled onto the debate stage to face a commanding Trump — and history would forever be changed by the then-president's jaw-dropping performance.
While some Democrats and left-wing media types have slowly come around to admitting that the so-called "legacy media" tirelessly flew wingman for the White House lies about Biden's cognitive vacancy, others continue to absurdly sing from the same lying sheet of music.
Let's hope the latter continue to sing their ridiculous song as long as they can — and at least until the 2028 general election.
