"Politicians’ constant compulsion to blame the gap between policy victories and political support simply on poor communications, or worse, poor 'messaging,' is a bit too pat..."

"... both self-serving and self-exonerating. If only they knew about all the great things I’ve done! But Biden — who, by late in his term, 'had become among the most inaccessible presidents in modern history,' Timothy Naftali of Columbia University writes — did himself few favors on that front. 'He did not just fail to tout his achievements; he seldom even tried,' Michael Kazin, a historian at Georgetown, complains.... In her memoir, Jill Biden reimagines her husband’s communications struggles as something between a mistake and a virtue. 'While Joe was in office, I think he and I both erred on the side of silence, dignity and letting news cycles run their course,' she explains.... 'We were trying so hard to reassure everyone that we didn’t take the time to acknowledge that he looked very unwell in that debate, to say to the public: 'Yes. That was bad, no doubt.'"

Writes Carlos Lozada, in "The Verdict on Biden Is In" (NYT).

"But I think the meta text of why it was so shocking was all of the people that were waved off as conspiracy theorists. Right wing fever swamp people were completely right."

"Were a hundred percent right. They were completely right. And the people who, you know, even now, you know, you still hope they're telling the truth. Like maybe we can trust some of what they say they were this profoundly wrong. I think that is like the, the deeper layer of the shock."

Says Bari Weiss, somewhat babblingly. 

Jake Tapper, who has more reason to babble, speaks eloquently:

"The book has also amplified debate about whether more blame should be placed on Democratic leaders, Mr. Biden’s staff and the press for not revealing more about the former president earlier...."

"Intentionally or not, by being an author of a major book on the subject, Mr. Tapper has allowed himself to become a symbol of the establishment press that conservatives have long accused of hiding the former president’s frailty from the public. [Megyn] Kelly, the former Fox News star, subjected Mr. Tapper to intense grilling on her popular podcast in an interview that went viral online. 'You covered the Biden presidency aggressively throughout the four years, and you didn’t cover mental acuity, hardly at all,' Ms. Kelly said at one point. 'I mean, time and time again when issues came up, you seem to be running cover for the president.' Mr. Tapper denied the charges. 'Conservative media absolutely has every right to say, "We were hip to this, and the legacy media was not,"' he said later in the interview. 'Now, I do not accept that I was part of a cover-up. I do not accept that I was just providing cover for Joe Biden.'"

From "Everyone Now Has an Opinion on Jake Tapper/A book the CNN host co-wrote has received positive reviews and appears to be a sales hit. But it has also generated intense scrutiny of him and his work" (NYT).

So... you weren't "hip to this."

Why not? And why would I read a book written by such an out-of-touch, unobservant, slow learner? Or should I ask why would I read a book written by such a liar?

Who's in the worst position to write a book about the coverup of Biden's cognitive decline?

Tapper then: It's a conspiracy theory to say Biden has cognitive decline. It's a stutter.

Tapper now: A book on the cover up pic.twitter.com/UjnQXgkzFF

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) February 26, 2025

Here's Jake Tapper incensed over Joe Biden's "stutter" and outraged over claims of Biden's cognitive decline.

Now he's cashing in on a book about Biden's cognitive decline and media cover up. There is no bottom for these people.
pic.twitter.com/rdNdqh4YKQ

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) February 26, 2025

The performance of power in the arena and in the Oval Office.

Trump had a busy day yesterday, but let's focus on the showmanship in the signing of all those orders. First, on a little red-carpeted stage in the Capitol One Arena, he is literally The Man in the Arena (as Theodore Roosevelt put it):

 

He's got the people surrounding him, watching him sign papers at a tiny table, and they're fully engaged in the show he's putting on, as if it's a big boxing match going on there in that little square in the center of the arena. Whoever thought of dramatizing order-signing like that and getting a rowdy crowd to cheer as if it's a sport? 

Later, in the Oval Office, he signed more orders, this time in front of the press elite, and when they ventured questions, he answered — calmly, chattily, seriously, and easily. Joe Biden couldn't even answer one question from the press or get to the end of a single sentence without stumbling, and here's Trump, signing orders — take that, Paris Agreement — and holding a press conference at the same time... and showing no strain, even at the end of a long day of events, and with the Inaugural Ball yet to come:

Is it dangerous — reprehensible? — this showmanship in the exercise of power? Those who hate him and who hate the substance of those orders will, I presume, denounce the theatricality. It's cruel! But he's out there in the open, letting the people see him do his work, using the power he asked them to give him, and doing what he said he would do. What a contrast to Biden who campaigned hidden away in 2020 and who occupied the position of President without ever letting us see that — if! — he was the one doing the work.

After 4 years of The Man in the Basement, we have, once again, The Man in the Arena.

ADDED: Here's how Biden looked, signing his first executive orders — yay, Paris Agreement! — in the Oval Office in 2021. Scroll to 2:30 to hear — muffled behind masks — the first questions from the press. Biden answers one question as we hear aides hustling the reporters out of the room:

"A traditionalist to his bones, Mr. Biden has opted for the grace and reticence he believes are befitting the departing president of a defeated party..."

"... even as the incoming president threatens to imprison opponents and tries to install conspiracy-minded acolytes in positions of power.... At this stage of Mr. Biden’s presidency... his public messaging is targeted and restrained. Once Washington’s most loquacious chatterbox, Mr. Biden these days barely engages with the reporters who follow him everywhere. He has held no news conferences and conducted no interviews with the traditional news media since the election, though he has done some podcasts. His only reply to shouted questions from journalists during his entire Africa trip added up to 14 words. In South America, it was just a single word. As a result, Mr. Biden has not once publicly addressed his much-criticized decision to pardon his son since the written statement he released, nor has he discussed his consideration of blanket pardons for adversaries of Mr. Trump to protect them from his promised campaign of 'retribution' once he takes office...."

From "A Weary Biden Heads for the Exit/Still stinging from the election, President Biden is pushing for his final priorities but has absented himself from the national conversation about Donald Trump after warning repeatedly that he was a threat to American democracy" (NYT).

"The Biden crew is hectoring journalists to leave the president alone and explain how awful Donald Trump is."

"I have used every damning word in the thesaurus, thrice, about Trump. And I’ll invent some new ones if I have to. (Suggestions welcome.) But it is not my fault if 2016 Hillary Clinton and 2024 Biden are unable to prosecute the case against a candidate with as many psychoses and felonies as Trump. It’s theirs...."

Writes Maureen Dowd, in "For Biden, a Race Against Time" (NYT).

Why does The Washington Post illustrate this article with a photo of a random woman rather than the woman the article is about?

Notice that the woman's name does not appear anywhere in the long headline: "Radio station parts ways with host who interviewed Biden with questions from his aides/Interview 'violates our practice' said WURD president and CEO Sara M. Lomax. The station 'is not a mouthpiece for the Biden or any other Administration.'"

The name appears in the second and third paragraphs of the article:

"The Biden campaign seems to believe that journalists should stop reporting on polls, rallies, and other tentpoles of traditional presidential races..."

"... and instead devote their resources to telling Americans that Trump wants to be a dictator, over and over again. If that means ignoring Biden’s missteps and weaknesses, well, the Biden campaign can accept that.... [V]ilifying the media has been a building block of Trump’s political identity.... Trump can win this race without favorable media coverage... Biden is in a different, arguably opposite position. His campaign argues that Democrats, unlike Republicans, are actually tethered to reality. Biden’s people are desperately trying to convince voters that the country is in much better shape than most Americans seem to believe. That elections are safe. That the economy, and unemployment, are not as bad as you’ve heard. Biden’s team needs voters to trust reputable publications that reliably print and publish facts—such as the [New York] Times and the [Wall Street] Journal. Then some campaign staffers and high-profile Democratic supporters turn around and attack these publications, in the process casting doubt on their reliability. It’s a losing proposition.... Biden’s belief in the Constitution means he supports a free and independent press. Authoritarians rise by lying and sowing mistrust...."

Writes John Hendrickson, in "The Biden Campaign’s Losing Battle/Beating up on the media is Trumpian and ineffective" (The Atlantic)(free link: here).

Hendrickson's unexamined belief in Biden's belief in the Constitution makes me want to reverse engineer that sentence I boldfaced: Biden's failure to support a free and independent press means he does not believe in the Constitution. 

"First they came for the attendees of the White House Correspondents Dinner, and I said nothing...."

First they came for the attendees of the White House Correspondents Dinner, and I said nothing, because I hate those people https://t.co/hnAnLVFQOr

— Dr. Ben Braddock (@GraduatedBen) April 28, 2024

"[T]ensions between the White House and the [New York] Times... had been bubbling beneath the surface for at least the last five years."

"Biden’s closest aides had come to see the Times as arrogant, intent on setting its own rules and unwilling to give Biden his due. Inside the paper’s D.C. bureau, the punitive response seemed to typify a press operation that was overly sensitive and determined to control coverage of the president.... Although the president’s communications teams bristle at coverage from dozens of outlets, the frustration, and obsession, with the Times is unique, reflecting the resentment of a president with a working-class sense of himself and his team toward a news organization catering to an elite audience — and a deep desire for its affirmation of their work. On the other side, the newspaper carries its own singular obsession with the president, aggrieved over his refusal to give the paper a sit-down interview that Publisher AG Sulzberger and other top editors believe to be its birthright."

Writes Eli Stokols, in "Inside the NYT-White House Feud" (Politico).

I read the NYT every day and have closely followed presidential campaign news for the last 20 years. I want the NYT to hold to the highest journalistic standards, and — without question — any deviation from that has been in favor of Biden.

"Jill Biden and his other advisers come up with ways to obscure signs of senescence — from shorter news conferences to almost zero print interviews..."

"... to TV interviews mainly with fawning MSNBC anchors.... [T]he Biden crew clearly has no plan for how to deal with the president’s age except to shield him and hide him and browbeat reporters who point out that his mental state... is a genuine issue.... Cosseting and closeting Uncle Joe all the way to the end — eschewing town halls and the Super Bowl interview — are just not going to work. Going on defense, when Trump is on offense, is not going to work. Counting on Trump’s vileness to secure the win, as Hillary did, is not going to work...."

Writes Maureen Dowd, in "Mr. President, Ditch the Stealth About Health" (NYT).

So... sift through all that jaunty prose and you'll see Dowd predicting a Trump victory.

"The White House announced that Joe Biden would deliver remarks at 7.45pm – giving the press just 23 minutes to prepare...."

"As it happened, many White House correspondents were at a meeting near the Watergate building about a mile and a half away. The Guardian was among four who jumped in a car, raced across town and sprinted up sedate Pennsylvania Avenue, greeting the Secret Service in a breathless and disheveled state. Perhaps the press were about to witness history. Was Biden set to announce peace in the Middle East or Ukraine? Was this his Bin Laden moment, a military strike that killed a top terrorist leader? Or after a devastating justice department report said his memory is shot due to old age, was he about to do a Lyndon B Johnson and announce he is not seeking re-election?"

Writes David Smith, on The Guardian, in "Biden was in a fighting mood for surprise speech – but he didn’t win/The president insisted he ‘put the country back on his feet’, but a last-minute fumble provided more fodder to his detractors."

Overstepping.

When journalists broke the story of how the Biden Admin was weaponizing the US Security State to coerce Big Tech to censor the internet of dissent, jealous and partisan corporate journalists told everyone to ignore it all because it was a "nothing burger." Then: pic.twitter.com/KTWc0DVhAc

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 5, 2024

"This was Mexican-style news coverage, a repudiation of the concept of separation of business and news."

"What I saw there was batting practice, someone dropping balls for him to hit out of the park. I think it was an embarrassment."

Joaquin Blaya, a former president of Univision, told the Washington Post, quoted in "Latino backlash grows over Donald Trump’s friendly Univision interview/Members of Congress plan to ask for a meeting with a company executive as a famous actor, a Univision founder and Latino rights advocacy groups speak out."

The pushback comes after a Nov. 7 interview with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida that was arranged with the help of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and attended by a trio of senior executives at Univision’s parent company. The interview was notable for its gracious tone, lack of follow-up questions and Trump’s assertion in the first minutes about owners of the network....

The network, which has said it has also requested an interview with President Biden, announced a new policy of preventing opposition advertising during single-candidate interviews shortly before the Trump interview aired. 

Let Biden do his own interview, so we can compare how the network treats the candidates. And let's see The Washington Post give equal coverage to media giving similarly cushy coverage to Biden. The coddling of Biden — does he even do interviews? — is so widespread may be hard to see it as any kind of news at all. It's dog bites man. The cushy Trump interview is man bites dog. Front page news!

Of course, it must be terrifying to Democrats to see Trump protected within the largest Spanish-language media company. 

By the way, if Trump used "Mexican-style" as a pejorative, he'd be reviled.

"You turn on the television and there's not a whole lot about 'Boy saves dog as he swims in the lake.' It's about 'Somebody pushed the dog in the lake.' I mean, I get it.'"

Said Joe Biden, quoted in "Biden rambles about TV news being dominated by dogs being 'pushed' in lakes as he blames 'unhappy' reporters for Americans thinking the economy is dire" (Daily Mail).

The analogy makes perfect sense to me. He's saying what people always say about the news — variations on "If it bleeds, it leads." But...

The president's dog analogy comes the same week it was revealed that first dog Commander was removed from White House grounds after a series of biting incidents. On Thursday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to reveal the dog's whereabouts.

So he has dog on his mind. He needs to think of an example, and he thinks of a dog example.

"A study published in December estimated that gas-burning stoves are responsible for 12.7 percent of childhood asthma in the United States."

"Gas stoves emit nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and fine particulate matter when they are turned on.... They also release other harmful air pollutants that are known or suspected to cause cancer, and can even leak those chemicals when they are turned off... When it comes to gas bans, Republicans have been the loudest critics and 20 Republican-controlled state legislatures have passed laws prohibiting such bans. But in most households in those red states cook with electric stoves, not gas.... States with the highest percentage of households that use gas for cooking are controlled by Democrats and include California, Nevada, Illinois, New York and New Jersey, according to the analysis...."

From "Ban Gas Stoves? Just the Idea Gets Some in Washington Boiling. The nation’s top consumer watchdog agency raised concerns about indoor air pollution from gas stoves. A political firestorm ensued" (NYT).

Obviously, banning gas stoves is terrible politics. Republicans are opposed in principle and Democrats are the people who have gas stoves and feel deeply emotionally attached to them. This NYT article seems designed to get Biden out of a jam.

I came here from Memeorandum, which presents the headline as "No, Biden Is Not Trying to Ban Gas Stoves." Google confirms that was the original headline:

 

Too obvious that they're running interference, I presume.

"'It’s a timeless bridal look,' says hairstylist Xavier Velasquez—who met Biden through her longtime brow artist Azi Sacks—of the sculptural bun look he crafted. "

That's just 2 of "All the Details Behind Naomi Biden’s Timeless Wedding Day Beauty" (Vogue).

Imagine having a "longtime brow artist." Imagine "crafting" a "sculptural bun look." It's not just a bun. It's a crafted sculptural bun look.

In Vogue. Which also has "Exclusive: Naomi Biden on Her White House Wedding."

 

I would not have posed Jill like that. Too evocative of Joe Biden's hair-inhalation propensities. But I mainly wanted you to see what longtime brow artistry and sculptural bun look craftsmanship can do. And I wanted to set up the laugh you'll get when you read what White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said: 

"The wedding of Naomi Biden and Peter is a private family event. Naomi and Peter have asked that their wedding be a closed to the media and we are respecting their wishes. This is something that the couple has decided."

"For years, the media has continued to report President Biden’s repeated claim that 'I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.'"

"At the outset, the media only had to suspend any disbelief that the president could fly to China as Vice President with his son on Air Force 2 without discussing his planned business dealings on the trip. Of course, the emails on the laptop quickly refuted this claim. However, the media buried the laptop story before the election or pushed the false claim that it was fake Russian disinformation. President Biden’s denials continued even after an audiotape surfaced showing President Biden leaving a message for Hunter specifically discussing coverage of those dealings... Some of us have written for two years that Biden’s denial of knowledge is patently false.... Reporters have to insist that there was nothing to see or they have to admit to being part of the original deception... The media is now so heavily invested in the trick that they are sticking with the illusion even after 'the reveal.'..."

Writes Jonathan Turley.

"Biden, Storyteller in Chief, Spins Yarns That Often Unravel/President Biden has been unable to break himself of the habit of embellishing narratives to weave a political identity."

That's the headline at the NYT for something currently at Memeorandum with the headline "Biden's Folksiness Can Veer Into Folklore, or Falsehoods."

Perhaps that had been the front-page teaser at the Times. It's not on the front page at the moment. It went up yesterday, but there's only one newer headline with the name Biden on the front page — "Biden Administration Plan Could Lead to Employee Status for Gig Workers" — and that isn't about Biden, just his administration. 

There's an older headline still on the front page — "Joe Biden Knows How to Use Donald Trump." That extols Biden... but for what? What is Biden being given credit for here? The author is Ezra Klein, who goes on about how "startlingly few interviews and news conferences" Biden gives.