Dementia And Double Standards
https://issuesinsights.com/2024/01/22/dementia-and-double-standards/
Every once in a while media bias is so flagrant, it’s worth pointing out.
At an event in North Carolina last Thursday, President Joe Biden called out for a congresswoman with whom he claimed he’d just been photographed. She was, at the time, in Washington, D.C.
At an event in New Hampshire the next day, presidential candidate Donald Trump appeared to mix up Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley when talking about Jan. 6.
Guess which mental lapse was ignored while the other was covered by the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, ABC News, The Hill, PBS, and countless other news outlets.
About a minute into his speech about the taxpayer money he’s dumping into high-speed rail, Biden veered off his teleprompter and apparently forgot where he was, or what day it was.
“Where’s Deborah?” he asks, referring to Rep. Deborah Ross, who was in Washington. “Did she — I just had my picture taken with her. That’s probably why she left. (Laughter.) No, all kidding aside — but, anyway — you — oh, she couldn’t be here, actually. That’s not true. I got it mixed up.”
Later in that same speech, Biden, while carefully reading his teleprompter, said that “We’re the only major company in the world that has come out of every crisis stronger than we went in.” (He meant to say country, but never caught that error.)
One of the signs of dementia is “disorientation in terms of place and time, such as confusion regarding the season, date, day of the week, or time of day.”
You’d think that, given all the other signs of mental decline Biden has exhibited, this bizarre mental lapse would raise some alarms. Only Fox News and the New York Post bothered to it.
Now, switch over to Trump’s – entirely unscripted – remarks in New Hampshire the next day.
Trump, as he often does, was measuring his opponent based on crowd size.
“Look at all the people back there — you got a lot of people. This is supposed to be a quaint little area. This is not quaint at all. You know when [Nikki Haley] comes here she gets like nine people, and the press never reports the crowds you know.”
Then Trump suddenly switched gears to talk about Jan. 6.
“By the way, they never report the crowd on Jan. 6. You know Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, you know, they — do you know they destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence, everything, deleted and destroyed all of it. All of it. Because of lots of things … like Nikki Haley is in charge of security — we offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, National Guards, whatever they want. They turned it down. They don’t want to talk about that. These are very dishonest people.”
The Biden campaign, incredibly, decided to make hay of Trump’s flub, posting that “A deeply confused Trump confuses Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley multiple times: Nikki Haley was in charge on Jan. 6. They don’t want to talk about that.”
The press took the bait, and then laughably claimed that the reason one Trump gaffe is big news while Biden’s everyday glitches aren’t is that Trump has been mocking Biden for his mental erosion.
“While Biden has had his fair share of gaffes and flubs, he hasn’t made his predecessor’s mental fitness a major campaign issue like Trump has,” is how NBC News put it.
The New York Times justified its coverage this way: “Mr. Trump, 77, often attacks President Biden, 81, over his age and suggests that Mr. Biden is mentally unfit for office. ‘He can’t put two sentences together,’ Mr. Trump said on Friday. ‘Can’t put two sentences together. He needs a teleprompter.’”
The corporate media then kept the Trump story alive for the entire weekend with various follow-ups.
Yeah, sure, we know, the corporate media are partisan hacks. But every once in a while their malfeasance is so flagrant it’s worth pointing out.
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