According to new internal polling, American voters have lost faith in Joe Biden after Thursday's debate, during which he often appeared dazed, fragile and unable to speak coherently.
Open Labs reported substantial declines for Biden in swing states Tuesday, projecting an electoral map of 333 to 205 in favor of Donald Trump.
The debate should not have been much of a surprise. Biden has looked frail and confused for much of his presidency. Thursday was more of the same.
So, why are polls just now reflecting concern over Biden's mental acuity? Quite simply, the corporate press duped Americans at large.
For months, legacy news outlets downplayed warnings of Biden's declining cognitive state. Rarely would you see CNN or ABC play a clip of Biden's repeated blunders.
Most news networks and newspapers dismissed a lengthy piece from the Wall Street Journal in June about Biden’s mental state as a right-wing talking fallacy.
Consequently, voters across the country were taken aback when Biden struggled to complete his thoughts, spoke about non-existing "trillionaires," and lamented that "in-laws, spouses, brothers, and sisters" are raping American women (they are, thankfully, not).
Semafor journalist Ben Smith sought to find answers about why the press largely ignored Biden's mental condition ahead of the debate, knowing they had access to the same information and videos OutKick, Fox News and a few other outlets had cited.
Former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson admitted to Smith that corporate journalism would rather bury the truth than tell the truth if it benefits Donald Trump.
"Obviously, the President’s decline was a super hard story to report, even by those who wanted to get it, like the WSJ. Their story did not deliver, using mostly named GOP sources," Abramson said.
"But I do think if enough reporters had pushed, the story was reportable. I worry that too many journalists didn’t try to get the story because they did not want to be accused of helping elect Donald Trump. I get that.
"But this is no excuse for abandoning our first duty, which is to report the truth and hold power accountable. President Biden should be held accountable for his obvious lapses of mental acuity, even if there are periods of lucidity."
Sound familiar?
Former New York Times opinion editor Adam Rubenstein penned an article for The Atlantic in February in which he explained how the paper did not want to report on the Hunter Biden laptop story – which was first reported by the New York Post – out of fear it would hinder Biden's election efforts that November.
"Was it truly ‘unsubstantiated,’ as the paper kept saying?" Rubenstein asked, rhetorically. "At the time, it had been substantiated, however unusually, by Rudy Giuliani.
"Many of my colleagues were clearly worried that lending credence to the laptop story could hurt the electoral prospects of Joe Biden and the Democrats. But starting from a place of party politics and assessing how a particular story could affect an election isn’t journalism (emphasis added)."
The press and Big Tech buried the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020, which polling says would have changed the minds of one in six Biden voters. However, they can't bury the Joe Biden debate story.
We all saw it.
CNN also admitted on Tuesday that several Washington journalists feared reporting about Biden's age because it would anger the White House, Democrats, and "liberal Twittersphere."
The White House press shop has also been very "aggressive" and "fairly successful" in mitigating coverage of concerns over the president’s age, said another White House reporter who works for a different publication.
"[B]erating reporters who bring them reporting about age concerns, bemoaning that it’s all anyone writes about (clearly, it’s not) and often attacking pieces after they run," the reporter told CNN. "I think that’s left some folks to conclude that these stories are too painful to report or that they should pick their spots more. It’s clear the age stories that have angered the White House (and the liberal Twittersphere) the most."
At the core of journalism, the press has two obligations: 1) hold the people in power accountable; 2) do not withhold critical information from voters about their country.
The media, as a whole, has failed in its coverage of Joe Biden.
In case you needed any more proof, the legacy media is not an accurate source of information ahead of the election.