The Liars Have Been Exposed

AP Photo/Gerald Herbert

One of the more interesting bits of spin--actually, the ONLY bit of spin from the Democrats--coming out of the debate was that whatever you think of Joe Biden's performance, Trump spewed nothing but one lie after another. 

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On its face, the claim is ridiculous. Joe Biden pushed so many hoaxes during the debate that it was laughable. Snopes just put the final nail in the coffin of the "fine people" hoax just a few days ago and Biden trotted it out again. It was pathetic. 

But as I, Ed, and John have already pointed out today, the biggest liars who were exposed last night were the mainstream media and all the people who have been telling us that Joe Biden is sharp as a tack, doing handstands while solving the dark matter conundrum and curing cancer every day. 

Bari Weiss, as she often does, sums up the real bottom line of the debate: the mainstream media are the biggest liars in America. 

As you all know, I have something of an intellectual crush on Bari. She is one of the smartest and most honest writers out there. And she has, metaphorically speaking, cajones. She is willing to stand up and call bulls**t when people are lying, and that is a rare commodity these days (outside of Hot Air and the Townhall Media family. Subscribe to our VIP for 60% off using the code USA60!)

Rarely are so many lies dispelled in a single moment. Rarely are so many people exposed as liars and sycophants. Last night’s debate was a watershed on both counts.

The debate was not just a catastrophe for President Biden. And boy—oy—was it ever.

But it was more than that. It was a catastrophe for an entire class of experts, journalists, and pundits, who have, since 2020, insisted that Biden was sharp as a tack, on top of his game, basically doing handstands while peppering his staff with tough questions about care for migrant children and aid to Ukraine.

Anyone who committed the sin of using their own eyes on the 46th president was accused, variously, of being Trumpers; MAGA cult members who don’t want American democracy to survive; ageists; or just dummies easily duped by “disinformation,” “misinformation,” “fake news,” and, most recently, “cheapfakes.”

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Lies. All lies. Not a word of what the MSM has been saying has been true. 

You and I have known that for a long time, of course. But the average American doesn't live and breathe politics, and simply don't have time to "do their own research." We can scream at the TV or computer screen and wonder how people can be taken in by such transparent lies, but we have to remember that most people are working, raising kids, and keeping their household together. 

And they want to take in a game. Who can blame them, really? It's not like everybody wants to focus on politics. It's just geeks like you and me who do. 

So most people outsource doing the research to the media, and the media spews lies 24/7/365. We can be frustrated by people's credulousness, but they have a pretty good excuse. They are trusting "experts" with "fact checkers." It's often a decent strategy, especially if the experts aren't pathological liars as they all are now. 

One vital thing we need to accomplish over the next several months is to keep pounding on the media. Joe Biden is done. The media is the real enemy because they are the ones who keep harming the country by foisting Democrats on us. They formulate the lies, spread the hoaxes, and spoon-feed everybody the s**t. 

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We need to remind people that they have been lied to. Forty-eight million people watched the debate according to the ratings, and they saw what they saw: that the media lied. 

We need to focus on that. 

Here was The New York Times last week in an extensive piece headlined: “How Misleading Videos Are Trailing Biden as He Battles Age Doubts.” The story went on to attempt to convince readers that “there is the distorted, online version” of Biden, which is merely “a product of often misleading videos that play into and reinforce voters’ longstanding concerns about his age and abilities.” 

With forensic detail, three Times reporters compared these videos from various angles. “Some of the videos of Mr. Biden circulating during this year’s campaign are clearly manipulated to make him look old and confused,” they wrote, pulling clips that were meant to debunk the idea that he was either. Watch them. See for yourself.

When The Wall Street Journal earlier this month came out with a story for which reporters had interviewed 45 people, soberly laying out concerns about Biden’s age, it was trashed as an “egregious hit job.” Some people called for it to be retracted. 

“Congressional Republicans, foreign leaders, and nonpartisan national-security experts have made clear in their own words that President Biden is a savvy and effective leader who has a deep record of legislative accomplishment,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates told the WSJ. “Now, in 2024, House Republicans are making false claims as a political tactic that flatly contradict previous statements made by themselves and their colleagues.” 

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Lies. Every word of it. 

We need to destroy the credibility of the media. And if you think that the discontinuity between what the media said and what people saw is enough to do it I have bad news for you: it wasn't. Everybody is focused on Biden's failures. We need to focus on the media's because Biden is toast already. 

But last night, many of the very people who say they are shocked—shocked!—by Biden’s showing were exactly the people who were covering for him. 

Here was Ed Krassenstein reacting to a video of Joe Biden tripping up the stairs in October of 2023: “Once again, people are pretending to be frightened over the fact that Joe Biden stumbled going up stairs at age 80. I literally stumble going up the stairs at least twice a week. I even fell down my spiral staircase a couple weeks ago. I’m 41 years old, workout daily, and actually use the stair-stepper at the gym 5 days a week. Should I be concerned?”

Here was Krassenstein last night: “Joe Biden has trouble speaking.”

Here was MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in early February saying Biden is fit for the presidency because he can ride a bike. 

Here was Maddow last night, admitting Biden had a “weak” voice and “halting delivery.”

Here was The View co-host Ana Navarro-Cárdenas in September of last year: “Joe Biden is old, but he ain’t dying any time soon. I don’t know if you guys saw him this weekend. He was at the G20. One moment I turned on the TV, he was in India, and then I turned on the TV, he was in Vietnam. Then I turned on the TV, he was giving a press conference, and then at the end of being up for, like, 24 hours working in a completely different part of the world, he said, ‘You know what? I got to go to bedʼ while Republicans were all pouncing on the fact that the man who had been up for 38 hours had to—I had to go to bed just watching him on TV.”

Here was Navarro-Cárdenas’s reaction to Biden’s post-debate speech, where he appeared to be slightly more coherent: “Where the hell was this Joe Biden?”

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Weiss has her eye on the real target: the lying liars who lie every moment of the day. They are now acting shocked because their lies have been exposed. 

"We didn't know!"

Total bulls**t. Anybody paying attention knew. It's just that too many people outsourced paying attention to the media, just as we outsource dealing with a disease to public health authorities. 

Look at where that got us. 

But, as with COVID policy, a lot of people still haven't broken with the MSM and the "experts." We need to force them to. 

That is our job in the next several months. 

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 20, 2024
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