Few moments in news media capture the incestuous relationship between corporate news media and Democratic machine apparatus as clearly as Jen Psaki’s lecturing of her copanelists (and the media) on NBC’s Meet the Press over how the Biden decline has been covered.
Watch how the discussion unfolded, as aired on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, February 11th, 2024:
JEN PSAKI: If you're sitting in the White House and on the campaign right now you are absolutely banging your head against the wall at the way that the Thursday report has been covered, given all of the things that have happened this week- including, and I know you asked Chris Christie about this, the fact that Donald Trump yesterday suggested that Vladimir Putin should have free reign in attacking NATO allies and what do we see is wall to wall coverage of whether a guy who is four years older than his opponent is too old to be president.
KRISTEN WELKER: And we are going to get to NATO…go ahead.
BRENDAN BUCK: Part of that job, to bring it to the front is, it’s the president's job to bring that out and attack his opponent. I mean, the president is not taking the opportunity on Super Bowl Sunday. He's not taking, really, any opportunities. And we hear, time and again…
PSAKI: Oh, that's not true. It's not being covered. He has traveled just as much as Donald Trump, as Barack Obama. It is hard to break through the cloud of Donald Trump in this media environment. That is true.
BUCK: You know as well as anyone he’s done fewer interviews, fewer press conferences than his predecessors, and we hear this- we heard from his spokespeople earlier. We’re led to believe that there’s two Joe Bidens. There’s one behind closed doors who is super sharp, who’s not showed his age at all. And then when he steps out, we see him every time. It’s just not there, And we have to imagine there are people making decisions because they are behind closed doors with Joe Biden and they are also seeing some slippage.
KRISTEN WELKER: And, Amna, the challenge for the Biden campaign and for the president is changing voters' minds, because when you look at the polls- 76 percent. We’re not talking about 50 percent. 76 percent say they have these concerns.
Such is the state of our corrupt media that the former White House Press Secretary, now under contract with NBC News, can come in and lecture the rest of the media on how they SHOULD cover President Joe Biden’s ongoing and very self-evident cognitive decline within the context of the events of the past week.
Between Macron, Kohl, the special counsel’s report and Mexico, it’s been an awful week for the White House. And the media, bless their hearts, are doing their level best to spin away but that’s not enough for Psaki.
Notice the narrative sleight of hand by Psaki: the subtle shift to age, which elicits a more favorable comparison to former President Donald Trump, and away from cognitive ability- which has been at the center of this devastating week.
Brendan Buck, former Press Secretary to Speaker John Boehner, twice cut through the spin and forcefully brought it back to cognitive decline. First, by reminding everyone that Biden sat out the Super Bowl interview for the second year in a row. Second, by exposing the absurdity of the Two Joe Bidens: the one behind closed doors who is razor sharp and in absolute command versus the one we see in front of the cameras who can’t seem to get his foreign presidents (or decades) right.
Expect more of this deceptive deflection from cognitive decline to age, as the left and media continue to consume themselves with talk of the 25th Amendment and removing Biden from the Democrat ticket- Jen Psaki’s protestations notwithstanding.
