You may have missed this yesterday, given that (a) it was Thanksgiving and (b) it's MSNBC. Joe Biden seems to have wanted to pay tribute to the media on his way out the door, literally telling reporters that their industry has "done a hell of a job" just a couple of weeks after the Protection Racket Media failed to drag an incoherent Kamala Harris across the finish line.
However, Biden also then notes that "an exceedingly small number of people" bother listening or watching them any longer. "So where do you get your news?" Biden wonders, and then questions whether the media actually inform people or just feed their delusions. It's almost reminiscent of George W. Bush's praise for his FEMA director at the start of the Hurricane Katrina disaster:
🚨A rambling Joe Biden tells the Propaganda Press they’ve “done a hell of a job” — laments that fewer and fewer Americans are consuming legacy media:
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) November 29, 2024
“Now you have to deal with the exceedingly small number of people watching mainstream television and reading the newspapers."… pic.twitter.com/ikJKZu4RfL
My message is to just remember who we are. Look, you’ll have a very tough job. I’m not being solicitous, a really tough job. Think about it… I remember a couple weeks ago that surveyed done how people they feel about where they are, 62 percent felt they’re doing pretty well. Asked what they about the direction of the country, only 35 percent said we’re moving in the right direction. I think there is an explanation for that.
Biden is the explanation for that, as is Kamala Harris. This is nothing more than the lament of a man mired in near-historical presidential disfavor in the electorate, and whose status quo just got roundly rejected as a result. People can feel they're doing well and still think the country is heading in the wrong direction, after all. They may feel that they are personally doing well despite Joe Biden and the Democrat establishment, rather than because of it.
In a sense, this is nothing much different than the Sharon Stone/Alex Baldwin argument: voters are too stupid to act in their own interests. Joe Biden's arrogance and condescension shouldn't surprise anyone, either. He has spent decades exhibiting both in Washington DC, sneering at anyone who contradicts him. This is the man who just called half of the country's voters "garbage" for opposing his hand-picked and anointed successor in an unguarded moment on a recorded Zoom call.
Nevertheless, Biden praises the media for basically treating Americans the same way:
This is not a criticism of the press, you know me too well. When you turn on the television, [people] don’t see a lot of good news, even stuff that is good news doesn’t seem to sell very well. And so when you turn on TV, everything looks bad. Everything! And now you have to deal with the exceedingly small number of people watching mainstream television and reading the newspapers. I forget the number, you’d know better than I would but the numbers are way down. So where, where do you get your news?
How do we know [you’re hearing is not] what you’re just we looking for as opposed to what’s [really] happening… not because of you… I’m not being critical of the press.
Of course he's not! Well, not intentionally, anyway. The Protection Racket Media carried his water for the last four-plus years, insisting that Biden was Sharp As a Tack! And ran rings around aides half his age! His aphasiac ramblings in the middle of speeches were stutters, you haters, an impediment that Biden had conquered in his youth but mysteriously now only appeared in public as he entered into his dotage. Eleventy-seven Nobel winners say so! And to argue otherwise is treasonous disinformation, punishable by silencing under the media's lèse-majesté policies as enforced by Newsguard.
Of course, when Biden's cognitive decline was exposed in the June 27 debate, the same media suddenly began reporting that Democrats noticed his increasing senility as far back as October 2021. And did we tell you that Kamala Harris is Sharp As a Tack and her cackle is just an expression of Joy?
At least Biden's decline is merely a function of age and pathology. The Protection Racket Media got its decline the old-fashioned way -- they earned it. The American media industry transformed itself into a propaganda arm of the Democrat Party in this cycle to an extent never before approached in any other election. Any coverage of Trump got drenched in accusations of fascism and bigotry, while coverage of Harris focused on 'brat', 'joy,' and Her Historic Candidacy -- rather than her obvious incompetence and the scummy way she ended up on the top of the ticket.
Voters rejected the candidate and the propaganda. They don't trust the Protection Racket Media any more; they trust used-car salesmen more, because at least the cars are real and actually run. This valediction to the media is stunningly appropriate, because both Biden and the Protection Racket Media collapsed under the weight of their own delusions. And it's even more fitting to see this on MSNBC, which is rapidly becoming the Eleanor Rigby of media outlets. All the lonely people ... where do they all belong?
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