Gaslighting the Press into Submission

“Original Sin” is hitting the bookstores today. The book, reports Audrey Fahlberg in NRO, is “a valuable play-by-play of the lengths that the former president’s inner circle went to hide Biden’s decline from the American people.”

Many players are complicit in the cover-up. Still to be reckoned with, however, is the media’s part in deceiving the public about Biden’s cognitive decline. “Original Sin” doesn’t fully explore the White House press corps’ incuriosity about the shenanigans in the Biden White House or why the White House press glossed over:

• Hunter Biden’s lies and legal troubles
• The Russian collusion and Trump
• The special counsel investigation into Biden’s mishandling of classified documents.

Included in the book is the savaging of the reputations of special counsel Robert Hur. Hur wasn’t alone. Also taking a thumping were the 2024 primary rival Dean Phillips, and “anyone who questioned Biden’s competence along the way.”

Holman Jenkins in the WSJ notes that the “alleged Trump menace was deliberately fluffed and promoted by the Biden administration to make the press and fellow Democrats shut up about Mr. Biden’s condition.”

For example, Jake Tapper, co-author of “Cover Up,” mocked Laura Trump. Tapper scolded Laura for “mocking his stutter. “Ahead of the book’s release, Tapper issued a mea culpa after being confronted with this and similar clips in which he argued against people questioning Biden’s competence.

Tapper is now at least acknowledging that some of the criticism is fair. He adds that he’s looking back on his own coverage “with humility.”

One humiliating anecdote tells of an anonymous reporter who was working on a story about the increasing frequency of Biden’s memory lapses, only to relent and drop the story for fear of punishment by the Biden White House:

The message from the White House was clear: If the reporter 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 tacit threat worked.