The deuce you say. Apparently, the New York Times has suddenly discovered that Joe Biden makes gaffes on a regular basis. In fact, they’re headlining that fact this morning, literally:

Biden Verbally Fumbles, Twice, During Campaign Trip in Florida

I’d bet it was more than twice, but at least the NYT is on the Biden gaffe beat now:

President Biden verbally fumbled during a campaign swing in Florida on Tuesday, confusing the American war in Iraq with the Russian war in Ukraine, and then he fumbled again while he tried to correct himself, misstating how his son Beau died in 2015.

In defending his record on inflation, Mr. Biden was trying to blame rising costs on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for his invasion of Ukraine, which has roiled international energy markets. It’s a point that he makes regularly in public speeches, but this time he mixed up his geography and history.

“Inflation is a worldwide problem right now because of a war in Iraq and the impact on oil and what Russia is doing,” Mr. Biden told a crowd during a speech at O.B. Johnson Park in Hallandale Beach, Fla., before heading to Miami Gardens for an evening campaign rally with Democratic candidates. He quickly caught his own mistake. “Excuse me,” he said, “the war in Ukraine.”

But as he tried to explain how he mixed up the two wars, he told the audience, “I think of Iraq because that’s where my son died.” In fact, Beau Biden, a military lawyer in the Delaware Army National Guard, served for a year in Iraq. He returned home in 2009 and died of brain cancer in the United States in 2015.

Mr. Biden, who has made the same mistake before, once again sought to correct himself. “Because, he died,” he said, apparently referring to his belief that Beau’s cancer could have been caused by his service in Iraq, where he may have been exposed to toxic burn pits.

As Peter Baker points out, Biden has “fumbled” the details of his own son’s death before. In fact, Biden has “fumbled” that point on multiple occasions, to the point where most of us have finally stopped pointing out that Biden appears to be using it to claim Gold Star Father status.

As for other “fumbles,” Curtis Houck calls them by their correct name:

This won't shock anyone, but the three major broadcast network mornings shows — ABC's @GMA, @CBSMornings, and NBC's @TodayShow — ignored Biden's multiple lies on the campaign trail yesterday.

Inflation, Iraq, Beau Biden, claiming to have attended Delaware State — all of them.

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) November 2, 2022

At least the NYT covered some of them, but those are hardly the first of Biden’s “fumbles,” even in the past few weeks. The NYT did cover Biden’s “Where’s Jackie?” moment at the end of September, although that coverage was not entirely universal among the media. The NYT used that incident more to scold Republicans for questioning Biden’s “mental capacity” rather than an opening to delve into that issue:

Mr. Biden did not correct himself during the remarks, but the incident quickly went viral on Twitter and other social media platforms, with some people seizing on the moment as evidence that Mr. Biden, who is 79, lacks the mental capacity to be president.

The president’s political opponents have been pushing that attack since he took office. White House officials have consistently rejected the charge, saying Mr. Biden remains intellectually engaged and sharp.

“Seizing”! Well, it beats pouncing, I suppose.

Today, though, the coverage of Biden’s “fumbles” at the NYT seems more straightforward. If that seems curious, especially this close to the midterm election, it did to Power Line’s Steven Hayward too. He sees the beginnings of a new media narrative forming for a post-Red Tsunami election cycle:

Facing an electoral wipeout next week, but seeing the White House circling the wagons already with reasons why the election disaster can’t be blamed on President Biden, the coordinated campaign to force Biden to step aside in 2024 mooted here several months ago appears to be getting an early re-start a week ahead of the election.

Behold the New York Times tonight, channeling Power Line … The New York Times printing a headline like this is a flashing beacon to the rest of the media that they should get ready to produce their own drumbeat of stories on this theme, which isn’t exactly news.

On that theme, Washington Post columnist George Will clears a path as well. Will is of course a staunch conservative columnist and not a news reporter, but the Overton window on Biden’s future is beginning to shift in these legacy-media platforms that have covered for Biden until now. It also moves that Overton window a lot closer to the D-word — dementia — at the WaPo:

Meeting recently with some progressive activists, Biden said his $426 billion student loan forgiveness was accomplished by “a law” that he had “just signed”: “I got it passed by a vote or two.” No. He. Did. Not.

Biden was not merely again embellishing his achievements. This is not just another of his verbal fender benders. There is no less-than-dismaying explanation for his complete confusion. What vote? Who voted? …

It is frightening that Biden does not know, or remember, what he recently did regarding an immensely important policy. He must be presumed susceptible to future episodes of similar bewilderment. He should leave the public stage on Jan. 20, 2025.

So should his vice president. Thomas R. Marshall, Woodrow Wilson’s vice president, joked, “Once there were two brothers. One ran away to sea; the other was elected vice president of the United States. And nothing was heard of either of them again.” Kamala Harris has been heard from, sufficiently. …

Regarding Biden and Harris, the national Democratic Party faces two tests of stewardship: Its imprimatur cannot again be bestowed on either of them. Biden is not just past his prime; even adequacy is in his past. And this is Harris’s prime.

Will doesn’t use the word “dementia,” but his argument is clear — the president’s cognition is impaired to the point of incapacity. That’s an argument that media outlets like the NYT and Washington Post tried to marginalize until very recently — in the NYT’s case, as recently as that late-September report on “Where’s Jackie?”

If the midterms turn out better than expected for Democrats, expect those signals to go back to the status quo ante. But if it’s as bad as polling indicates — or worse — don’t be surprised to see a lot more reporting on Biden’s “fumbles” and Harris’ incompetence for the next few months to discourage a re-election bid in 2024.

In the meantime, enjoy this oldie but goodie about Biden’s intellectual capacity from 2008. (Alas, the video is no longer available.) Maybe if the media had covered Biden then (and before) like they cover Republicans, Democrats would have elected someone who didn’t lead them into an electoral box canyon in 2022.

Update: Mirabile dictu, CNN is now suddenly on the “Joe Biden lies” story too:

President Joe Biden keeps touting the size of next year’s increase in Social Security payments.

But his boasts leave out critical context: Biden doesn’t explain that the reason the 2023 increase will be unusually large is that the inflation rate has been unusually large. Nor was that context included in a misleading post from the White House’s Twitter account on Tuesday – a post the White House deleted on Wednesday after it was widely criticized and Twitter affixed a fact-check to it.

In addition, during a speech in Florida on Tuesday, Biden falsely claimed that the 2023 increase in Social Security payments will be the first increase in 10 years. In fact, there was an increase in every year of the Trump administration and the first two years of the Biden administration. …

The increase in Social Security payments in 2023 is the biggest in years because the inflation rate has been the biggest in years. Under a law passed in the 1970s, Social Security payments must be increased by the same percentage that a certain measure of consumer prices has increased.

The increase is known as a cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA. Why will there be an 8.7% cost-of-living adjustment in 2023? Because average prices in the third quarter of 2022, as measured by the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), were up 8.7% from average prices in the third quarter of 2021.

Hmmmmmm.