Donald Trump has been a pariah in the media since he was elected president in 2016, but there has been hardly a word spoken about him in the aftermath of last month’s presidential debate on CNN.
Instead, nearly all of the corporate media have set their sights on Joe Biden and his fitness for office. This is despite the fact that they largely excused his obvious physical and cognitive decline over the last four years.
So, what changed? On Tuesday’s show, Megyn was joined by the hosts of Ruthless – Josh Holmes, Comfortably Smug, and John Ashbrook – to discuss how the press has turned on Biden and what the reasoning might be.
Media vs. Biden
Everyone expected a dramatic 2024 election cycle, but few could have predicted what has transpired since June 27. “Who had on their 2024 bingo card the entire media turns on Joe Biden, knifes him repeatedly for two weeks or two months, and completely batters and bruises him right before the vote,” Megyn asked. “It was Trump who was supposed to be getting that treatment right now from the media.”
In the aftermath of a Manhattan jury finding Trump guilty of all 34 felony counts in his New York business records trial, Megyn said the talking points were supposed to be “convicted felon, convicted felon” on loop. “Instead, we’re getting, ‘decrepit, ‘can’t do it,’ ‘incompetent,’ ‘cognition’ – all the problems – outlined by The New York Times, and Politico, and Axios, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution [about Biden],” she added.
Holmes called the stream of unflattering reporting that has emerged about Biden a “black swan media event” that “does not happen,” but it is occurring in this case now that Democrats “are pushing it.”
Why Now?
But ‘why now?’ is what many who have previously watched Biden exhibit alarming behavior not unlike what was on display at the CNN debate are asking themselves.
Back in February, Special Counsel Robert Hur released a damning 388-page report about Biden’s handling of classified documents in which he concluded the 81 year old would not be prosecuted because he would likely be seen by a jury as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
As Megyn noted, the media – including the very same outlets that are now calling on Biden to withdraw from the 2024 race – were quick to discredit Hur’s findings and characterization of Biden in an effort to defend the president. “Poor, Robert Hur. Where you go to get your reputation back,” she asked. “He was smeared by everybody in the media, including the Times, which is now saying, ‘He’s got to step down. He’s too infirmed. He can’t do it.'”
While the media had, in Megyn’s words, “opportunities” and “excuses” to report on Biden’s condition for years, they chose not to until three things happened. “The lawfare campaign failed, the polls… did not improve, and then the world saw – in an undeniable way – just how bad he was,” she explained. “They were [suddenly] like, ‘We’ve got to get off the sinking ship right now. The devil is about to get elected.'”
In Holmes’ view, this current pile-on “perfectly illustrates the lengths to which Democrats went to try to conceal Joe Biden’s actual health from the American public.” And it was only when they realized they could no longer conceal it and it might cost Democrats the election, that they turned.
“You can see the truth, that’s what [they are] concerned about,” Holmes concluded. “[They] knew the truth, but now the fact that we can see the truth, and it’s not running through the prism that [they] had constructed to try to present a different reality, now it’s a problem.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Ruthless by tuning in to episode 832 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.