Tapper’s Book Condemns Journalists In More Ways Than One
I & I Editorial Board May 27, 2025 @ Insight and Issues
Editor's Note: I've not asked for nor have I received permission to publish this in full, but a link would in no way do justice to this really excellent piece, one of the best so far. So, if the Insight and Issues staff objects, I'll delete it. RK
The reaction to Jake Tapper’s and Alex
Thompson’s book about how the White House “hid” Joe Biden’s mental
decline has been brutal – and fittingly so. But their book inadvertently
reveals something even worse about today’s corporate journalists.
Tapper and Thompson would have us believe that they were shocked!
shocked! to discover that Biden was suffering serious and worsening
mental infirmities while president, because the White House had so
expertly hidden them. And that it was only through their intrepid
reporting that the truth can now be told.
This is laughable on its face.
The stories the authors recount were all known by
journalists all along. How else could they have churned out a book in a
matter of months after Biden left office? Every story in that book, every one, was known to White House reporters who diligently refused to report them at the time. That includes “revelations” in the book such as that:
A small, tight-knit group in former President Joe Biden’s inner
circle was running the White House like a ‘politburo,’ and they were the
‘ultimate decision-makers’ as Biden’s health and cognitive function
continued to decline.
Tapper himself was one of the worst offenders. Just watch any of the
long and damning collection of clips circulating on social media, like
the one below, (Go to the original post to see the video. RK) showing Tapper parroting White House talking points.
What’s amazing about it all is that even as they were covering for
Biden, reporters knew the public wasn’t buying their spin. Polls
consistently showed that vast majorities of the public were concerned
about Biden’s mental infirmities. Our latest I&I/TIPP poll, which we
will report on Wednesday, finds that by a stunning 2-to-1 margin,
Americans agree that the media covered up former Biden’s mental
infirmities.
So,
every attempt to downplay or ignore Biden’s cognitive incapacity served
only to diminish the corporate media’s trustworthiness. But that was
the price they were willing to pay to protect their guy.
What’s so ludicrous about Tapper and Thompson’s book is that they
want to regain their credibility by saying that they — professional
journalists — were more gullible and more easily duped than your average
Joe. “We aren’t corrupt, just incompetent,” is their defense.
But what struck us most is a quote from the book – which we have not
and will not buy – describing how the White House put the kibosh on a
story questioning Biden’s mental acuity in late May 2024.
Here’s how Fox News describes it:
The book details one specific instance of the White House
successfully killing a story when, ‘weeks’ before the explosive Wall
Street Journal story detailing concern about Biden’s decline came out in
June, Steve Ricchetti, former White House deputy chief of staff,
strongly denied claims that the president was slipping to another
journalist.
‘[A] reporter with a different national news outlet had been hearing
from White House aides that behind the scenes the president was having
serious and disturbing moments, forgetting names and facts, sometimes
seeming seriously confused at meetings,’ the book read.
‘The reporter reached out to members of the White House press office,
which not only aggressively—and angrily—disputed her reporting but also
took the unusual step of having Steve Ricchetti call her,’ the book
said. ‘He talked to her off the record, so she couldn’t use any of what
he said or even attribute it to “a White House source.” But he told her
that everything the others were saying was false, and that he was at the
meetings as a counselor to the president.’
According to Tapper and Thompson, the Biden White House was going all out trying to control the perception of his health.
‘The message from the White House was clear, this reporter believed:
If she went forward with the story from anonymous aides, the White House
would aggressively dispute it, on the record, and portray her as a
liar,’ the book reads. ‘The tacit threat worked.’
The tacit threat worked.
A tacit threat from the Biden White House was enough to get a
“watchdog” reporter to turn tail and run. No doubt, a major
contributing factor was the reporter knowing that no other mainstream
journalist would back her up.
In fact, after that Wall Street Journal article came out, Tapper devoted himself to debunking it, as the new clips above show.
Contrast that with the same corporate media’s reporting on Trump – or any Republican for that matter.
Does anyone believe that a “tacit threat” from the Trump White House
would dissuade a reporter from running a story based on anonymous
sources?
Anyone … ? Bueller … ?
Quite the contrary. The flimsiest and most far-fetched stories that
make Trump look bad, that are based entirely on anonymous sources, that
the White House vociferously disputes, and that more often than not turn
out to be completely bogus, get front-page treatment. Then they get
picked up by every other corporate news outlet, shouted about on social
media, and cried about by celebrities and late-night talk show hosts,
until every American has heard the tale.
When
these Trump stories turn out to be false, the press either buries that
fact or doesn’t bother updating their readers. (A journalistic crime for
which no one is ever held accountable, which will further bury their
reputation. Our I&I/TIPP poll finds that 84% of those who believe
the media covered up Biden’s infirmities also said it was important to
hold the media accountable for doing so.)
So, what we have, by their own admission, are “mainstream” news types
who will dance to whatever tune their masters in the Democratic Party
play, no matter how much damage it does to their own reputations.
There’s a term for this sort of profession, and it isn’t “journalist.”
The MSM are liars one and all. Ray Charles could see that Biden hasn't been all there for years. And if I could see the decline just from clips on the TV, so could these so called journalists.
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