When it comes to critiques of Joe Biden’s presidency beyond noting the horrid results of his disastrous policies, the most common accusations fall into two general categories. One is that Uncle Joe is simply too old to do the job and too physically and cognitively challenged to do it even if he wants to. The other deals with the rapidly growing mountain of evidence that the Biden family has been engaged in corrupt influence-peddling schemes for decades. Most of the legacy media does its level best to ignore or at least play down these stories, so I was surprised when I saw both themes pop up in an article from NBC News yesterday. But NBC’s Sahil Kapur wasn’t joining the chorus of criticism of Biden’s history or his current performance. He was instead defending Biden by claiming that these stories are just a bunch of political spin being engineered by (wait for it…) Donald Trump. But he claims that Biden can’t possibly be both a cognitive mess and a “nefarious mastermind” at the same time, so this must be a fake storyline.

In 2020, the moniker was “Sleepy Joe.” Now, it has been revised to “Crooked Joe.”

During their first showdown, Donald Trump disparaged Joe Biden as “a sleepy guy in the basement of a house” who was barely aware of his surroundings. Now, facing four criminal indictments and gearing up for a 2024 rematch, the former president is changing course to depict his successor as a nefarious mastermind who is pulling the strings of a complex justice system without leaving any fingerprints.

In a social media post Tuesday, Trump wrote: “These Indictments and lawsuits are all part of my political opponent’s campaign plan. It is Election Interference, and they are going to use the DOJ/FBI to help them, which is illegal. Crooked Joe pushed this litigation hard to get it done. This is a new low in Presidential Politics.”

One entire category of wrongdoing is entirely missing from Kapur’s analysis. Nowhere in the lengthy article does he mention anything about the corrupt and almost certainly illegal influence-peddling racket that Biden Inc. has been operating at least since Joe’s time as the Vice President. The only reference to being “crooked” is the claim that Biden orchestrated the charges against Donald Trump in an effort to take him out of the 2024 election. And – again – Kapur attempts to make the case that Biden couldn’t possibly be organizing such a scheme while simultaneously being so cognitively challenged.

Kapur falsely claims that there is “no evidence” of any wrongdoing on Biden’s part, but that’s really not even the point. The entire argument about it being impossible for Joe Biden to be a nefarious mastermind and a cognitive mess at the same time is a dishonest straw man argument. I haven’t heard any serious critics trying to claim that Uncle Joe is at the helm of some brilliant network of nefarious operations today. For Pete’s sake, the guy can barely figure out how to move a beach chair down at the shore or find his way off of a stage without help.

All of the nefarious activity coming out of the Justice Department and DHS has clearly been orchestrated between Biden’s handlers and his willing supplicants who are in charge of those operations. The rogue prosecutors didn’t need any directions because they ran on a promise to “get Trump” and were primed and ready to go after him before they even took office. Nobody is accusing Joe Biden of “masterminding” anything at this point.

As to being “crooked,” almost all of that was unfolding back during Obama’s presidency, when Biden still seemed considerably more sharp. He probably didn’t have the business savvy to set up that vast network of LLCs to launder money through, but he could have left all of those details up to Hunter’s business partners. Is any of that still going on today? I rather doubt it. I’m not even sure if Joe even knows who he’s talking to if somebody hands him a phone, particularly if it’s later in the afternoon or evening.

But that doesn’t excuse him for being in the thick of things back in the day. Nor do these attempts at explaining away all of Biden’s issues make him any more fit or competent to be running the country in the current era. No amount of media cheerleading is going to change any of this. We just need to make sure that the rest of the country doesn’t fall for NBC News’ propaganda and learns the truth.