Joe Biden’s decline has been named the most underreported story of 2024 on one of America’s longest-running current affairs shows.
The designation was made on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” after the show’s host, Major Garrett, asked reporters during a panel discussion to reflect on the events of this year and identify the issues that were most apparent. It was conducted by Jan Crawford, the bureau’s chief legal correspondent.
“It’s been hidden and underreported. To me, it’s the obvious cognitive decline in Joe Biden that became undeniable in the televised debate,” Crawford said on Sunday’s broadcast.
She was referring to the June presidential debate between Biden and Donald Trump in Atlanta, where the president’s confused demeanor sparked deep criticism among Democrats about his ability to win the election. caused concern. Biden’s debate performance ultimately led him to decline his position as the party’s nominee in favor of Kamala Harris.
Crawford blamed fellow journalists for not earlier revealing the impact of aging on Biden, now 82, in his abilities.
“We should have asked harder about whether he deserves another four years, which could have led to a Democratic primary,” she said. “That could have changed the scope of the entire election.”
Crawford also expressed surprise at a recent report revealed in a Washington Post profile about Biden’s remorse for the presidency, saying he regrets abandoning the campaign and saying last month that he regrets abandoning the campaign. indicated that he believed Trump had won in the polls.
“Yet, incredibly, we hear in the Washington Post that his advisers regret dropping out of the race, (and) think Trump could have won.” And I think that’s either delusion or they’re gaslighting the American people,” she said.
The US media’s introspection over Biden’s failure to interrogate his alleged blindness is not new. In the months following the debate, members of the White House press corps pointed fingers at the administration’s press corps, and while the president’s appearances were tightly controlled, questions about Biden’s physical and cognitive abilities faced stiff opposition from the White House. said to have caused.
One journalist who said he raised the issue years ago reported being “blackballed” at a subsequent White House briefing.
Crawford, who taught journalism at American University, described how Biden’s advisers worked to limit access to the president throughout his four-year term as Biden’s job performance “diminished.” He cited a recent Wall Street Journal report.
Significantly, given that Biden reportedly believed he had a chance to win last month’s election, the report, released just before Christmas, shows that polls show him trailing Trump. , suggesting the president is not talking to his own pollsters. Instead, they sent a memo to campaign officials about their findings, but they saw no evidence that Mr. Biden personally looked at the data they sent.
In July, amid growing pressure to step down after the debate and with polls consistently showing Trump with a wide lead, Biden called the presidential race a “toss up”. This surprised Democratic Party leaders.
The magazine also described how reporters were instructed by senior staff to eliminate negative coverage of Biden when preparing news stories for him to read.
Democratic leaders in Congress also complained about the lack of access. After the June debate, Adam Smith, one of the first Democrats to call on Biden to withdraw, reached out to Biden to express his concerns about a failed military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. He said he was unable to warn them. He served as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
“Biden’s White House was more isolated than most other White Houses,” Smith said. “When Barack Obama was president, I spoke to him many times, and I wasn’t even the chairman of the committee.”
The Wall Street Journal published a report detailing evidence of Biden’s alleged cognitive slide more than three weeks before the Atlanta debate. The report prompted an angry rebuke from the White House, which complained that the report relied primarily on Republican or anonymous sources.
