Did Joe Biden’s aphasiac gaffe yesterday — and the White House’s bizarre attempts to deny it — finally break the dam on purposeful media ignorance of his cognitive condition? Apparently at Comedy Central, it did — for one night, anyway.

Trevor Noah seized on Biden’s “Where’s Jackie?” callout for deceased Republican representative Jackie Walorski. Noah joked that Biden was really looking for Jackie O, and that Osama bin Laden could be next. “At least he noticed she wasn’t there,” Noah sarcastically riffed:

“Noooo! Nooo! Joe, what are you doing!” said Noah, followed by a moan. “So awkward.”

Noah went on to mock Biden for the mistake.

“And his explanation didn’t help. You know, it was like, of course, I knew Jackie was there. I was looking for Jackie Kennedy. Where’s Jackie Kennedy? Where are you, Jackie? Where’s Jackie O.?” said Noah. “Look, at least on the upside at least he noticed that she wasn’t there. This is a good thing. Yeah, could’ve been much [worse] if he was like ‘Where’s Jackie? There she is! There’s Jackie! Everyone look at Jackie! She’d be like ‘there’s no Jackie.’ She’s there, everybody sees Jackie!”

Noah went on to sarcastically say that the gaffe “makes Biden a better president.”

“Think of how hard he must be working now to keep Americans safe knowing that Osama bin Laden is still out there somewhere,” he said. “Where is he? Where is he, Jackie? Where is he?”

Kudos to Noah for both timeliness and some courage. His audience may not appreciate skewering non-Republicans, after all, plus he may be the only late-night comic to target Biden’s clear cognitive issues for ridicule outside of Fox and Greg Gutfeld.

In fact, that’s a good question. Have any other late-night comics ever seriously riffed on Biden’s mental acuity and fumbles, on the alphabets or on the cablers, outside of Greg? Perhaps, but if so, it went pretty unnoticed. And one would think that kind of joke would not only grab attention from conservatives, who have long criticized the media for ignoring the obvious issues Biden has, but also progressives who would get offended by such satire.

Our friend Noah Rothman thinks the dam has broken on the closed-ranks media approach to Biden’s cognition issues. I’ll believe it when I see it, frankly, although Noah’s broadside last night is a good start. Once is a novelty, twice is a coincidence, but three times might make for a pattern. It should be noted, though, that the alphabets and cablers did cover the “gaffe” itself.

Or … did they? It depends on what definition of “cover” you use:

NEW: President Biden's ‘Where’s Jackie?’ gaffe has gone unmentioned by CNN, MSNBC and ABC/CBS/NBC newscasts despite the uproar that occurred at yesterday's WH press briefing. https://t.co/yBaBK8HTmr

— Joseph A. Wulfsohn (@JosephWulfsohn) September 29, 2022

Once is a novelty …

Duane Patterson and I discussed Biden’s gaffe and the White House handling of it on today’s Ed Morrissey Show podcast, too. Duane argued that the White House made it worse by refusing to just chalk it up as what it clearly was — a memory failure. “It’s not like it’s not like the press corps was asking for much,” Duane said. “All the press corps was really asking for is. Just admit he screwed up and he’s sorry. … “This administration has never discovered the first rule of holes,” he continued.

“Stop digging, you just stop digging,” I replied. “But because they dug in this, you had reporters asking for the prepared remarks so that it could demonstrate that Biden went off script. And they refused, they refused to supply the prepared remarks. I mean, there’s no way to come out of that looking good.”

“She didn’t have the political instincts to just say, ‘Hey, he screwed up’,” Duane said of Karine Jean-Pierre. “‘He had a bad day, sorry,’ and and be done with it.”

We discuss this and more on the latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast. Today’s show also features:

• Duane and I dissect the top stories this morning, including Kamala Harris’ latest embarrassment on the DMZ.
• We delve into Vladimir Putin’s annexation plans and how little connection they have to reality in Ukraine, or in Russia.
• In another other foreign policy crisis, Joe Biden has been absent  as Iranians revolt against Ali Khamenei’s mullahcracy …  but Khamenei has been absent as well. Where is he and what does his absence portend?
• Plus we look at breaking economic data which shows that inflationary erosion of buying power is worse than first reported — much worse.

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!