Why the Media Covered for Biden

Plus: A listener asks whether Bruce Springsteen's song Born in the U.S.A is actually patriotic.

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Why the Media Covered for Biden

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In this week's The Reason Roundtable, editors Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and special guest Elizabeth Nolan Brown size up the fallout from the mainstream media's lag in coverage of Joe Biden's cognitive decline, despite evidence existing well before his seismic debate performance on June 27.

01:50—Media fallout after Biden's debate performance

28:13—The Supreme Court rules on presidential immunity.

37:06—Weekly Listener Question

42:46— The Supreme Court's ruling on social media moderation

50:39—This week's cultural recommendations

Mentioned in this podcast:

"Ticket Change?" by Liz Wolfe

"Biden Insists Beyond All Reason That He's the Most Qualified Person To Be President," by C.J. Ciaramella

"Why Didn't the Media Notice Joe Biden's 'Jet Lag' Sooner?" by Robby Soave

"Kamala Harris Is a Cop Who Wants To Be President," by Elizabeth Nolan Brown

"Kamala Harris Was the Real Winner of Last Night's Debate," by Elizabeth Nolan Brown

"Biden's Litany of Excuses," by Liz Wolfe

"Presidential Debate Debacle Was a Great Argument for Smaller Government," by J.D. Tuccille

"Biden, Trump, and RFK Jr. Are All Anti-Freedom," by John Stossel

"Supreme Court's Presidential Immunity Ruling Could Shield Outrageous Abuses of Power," by Jacob Sullum

"Social Media Moderation Is Speech, Says Supreme Court," by Elizabeth Nolan Brown

"Stop Using My Song: 35 Artists Who Fought Politicians Over Their Music," by Eveline Chao

"Boss Talk: Why celebrities should never shut up—but stop complaining," by Nick Gillespie

"Bye-Bye American Pie," Nick Gillespie

"Why Superman and Wyatt Earp Left Kansas but Still Loved the Place," by Nick Gillespie

"Stephen Colbert Finds the Focus on Biden's Age to Be Old News," by Trish Bendix

Send your questions to [e-mail]. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.

Upcoming events:

• Monday, July 15: Matt Ridley and Stephen Goldstein debate the lab leak theory at the Soho Forum in New York City. Use the discount code REASON for 25 percent off all tickets. Details here.
• Tuesday, July 23: New York City premiere of Reason's Backpage documentary and panel discussion. Was the federal prosecution of online classified ad site Backpage.com a win for opponents of sex trafficking or a loss for First Amendment rights? View a new documentary by Elizabeth Nolan Brown and Paul Detrick and participate in a panel with Brown and Old Pros' Kaytlin Bailey about the case moderated by Nick Gillespie. Tickets are $10 and include beer, wine, soft drinks, and a light buffet. Seats are limited. Details here.

Today's sponsors:

• Students for Liberty
• Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath. On the app, it lets you know if you're burning fat or carbs, and it gives you tailored guidance to improve your nutrition, workouts, sleep, and even stress management. All you have to do is breathe into your Lumen first thing in the morning, and you'll know what's going on with your metabolism, whether you're burning mostly fats or carbs. Then, Lumen gives you a personalized nutrition plan for that day based on your measurements. You can also breathe into it before and after workouts and meals, so you know exactly what's going on in your body in real time, and Lumen will give you tips to keep you on top of your health game. Your metabolism is your body's engine—it's how your body turns the food you eat into fuel that keeps you going. Because your metabolism is at the center of everything your body does, optimal metabolic health translates to a bunch of benefits, including easier weight management, improved energy levels, better fitness results, better sleep, etc. Lumen gives you recommendations to improve your metabolic health. It can also track your cycle as well as the onset of menopause, and adjust your recommendations to keep your metabolism healthy through hormonal shifts, so you can keep up your energy and stave off cravings. So, if you want to take the next step in improving your health, go to lumen.me and use ROUNDTABLE to get $100 off your Lumen.

Audio production by Ian Keyser; assistant production by Hunt Beaty.

Music: "Angeline," by The Brothers Steve

• Video Editor: Ian Keyser
• Producer: Hunt Beaty

What are we consuming this week?

Katherine Mangu-Ward

• Fly Me to the Moon

Elizabeth Nolan Brown

• Hacks

Nick Gillespie

• The Last Rancher

Peter Suderman

• The Bear: Season 3

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Comments

[5.56]

They covered for him reluctantly and strategically. Doing things that way always works. And you know that.

[JesseAz (5-30 Banana Republic Day)]

It was the return to normal Reason voted for. Covering for Democrats against all evidence.

[VULGAR MADMAN]

I love how they talk about the media like they’re different from themselves.

[Bowerick Wowbagger]

Yep. I dont recall articles here talking about it much

[MasterThief]

I have yet to see them even contemplating dementia. They are just as bad as the rest of the Democrat partisan media and it shows since they don't cover anything damaging to democrats until the rest of the media finally touches on it. Reason is just as much of an in the tank left-wing publication. If they weren't you would see far greater divergence from the mainstream narratives

[JesseAz (5-30 Banana Republic Day)]

This makes Jeff's comment in the last thread awkward as he tried saying media doesn't cover for Joe.

[Fire up the Woodchippers! (5-30 Banana Republic Day)]

He did? Goddamn, that’s pathetic, even for him.

[JesseAz (5-30 Banana Republic Day)]

It is always good intentions and incompetence when his allies get caught in a scandal.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

LOL so precisely *how* many times have you given Trump and his pals the benefit of the doubt? Like, all the times?

I will freely admit when Biden lies. Will you admit when Trump lies?
Your pal ML thinks that Trump didn't lie at all, not even once, during the debate. Do you agree with him?

[Fire up the Woodchippers! (5-30 Banana Republic Day)]

Fatfuck, you’ve asserted the media hasn’t covered for Biden when that’s all they’ve done for four years.

[damikesc]

Depends on if Trump is "lying" or using hyperbole. The press is big on claiming hyperbole is lying when it comes to him alone. Hell, it's HILARIOUS reading their fact checks on Trump's "lies" on the Russia investigation when he was, in fact, quite correct.

How much of Biden's self-professed biography is true? It is A LOT less than the media claims.

He was rather low in his class in law school.
The truck driver who got in the wreck that killed his wife and child was not drunk.
His uncle was not eaten by cannibals.
He was not the first in his family to go to college.
Never got arrested protesting civil rights (was, in fact, in Congress dropping "N" bombs on camera).
Never arrested visiting Mandela.
Never drove a tractor-trailer.
Never taught a college course.
His house was not close to burning down due to a small kitchen fire, nor did firefighters nearly die putting it out.
Never was a coal miner.
Never got shot at in Iraq in 2007.
Made up a story about an Amtrak conductor who died at least a year before the story allegedly occurred telling him how much he remembers Biden riding Amtrak while Biden was visiting his sick mother...who died 5 years before the already-false conversation happened.

And these are just quick things about his OWN LIFE he made up out of thin air.

[BigT]

you could simply cite Biden's 1987 speech that he lifted word for word from Neil Kinnock. When that happened they searched and found dozens of similar instances.
He is and always was a moron who simply mouthed ideas from others. Now he can't even do that.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

No, I didn't. God you are such an asshole.
My argument is, that back in 2020, there were good faith reasons to believe that Biden wasn't a dementia patient. I said nothing about 2024, and I said nothing about the media.

But, as is typical for you, anyone who doesn't believe your narrative is a lying liar trying to deceive. No such thing as honest disagreement - the only two choices are complete submission, or complete deception.

[Fire up the Woodchippers! (5-30 Banana Republic Day)]

No, you just want to wriggle out of what you’ve done now that you’re caught. As usual.

[Minadin]

There were zero reasons in any sort of good or bad faith to believe that Biden wasn't a dementia patient in 2020.

[damikesc]

In 2020, Biden capped his day of activity before noon frequently. And he used teleprompters for every public appearance he made.

[BigT]

Exactly. He was just a bit earlier in the decline. Remember all the gaffs.

[Don't look at me!]

Even joe said he is sick and tired of the elites in his own party.

[VULGAR MADMAN]

Maybe he prosecute them for election interference.

[Fire up the Woodchippers! (5-30 Banana Republic Day)]

It would be hilarious if he decided to round up the ‘elites’ in his own party to hold on to power.

[Pepin the short]

A homeless drunk and handicapped fat ass told me today this was all good faith.

Narrative has changed again.

[JesseAz (5-30 Banana Republic Day)]

You were wrong for noticing and being consistent. Good faith argumentation requires switching to and fro from each narrative.

[Diarrheality]

Why the Media Covered for Biden

Mean tweets?

[VULGAR MADMAN]

Because, “our democracy “

[Diarrheality]

Fascinating that their democracy™ and actual democracy are irreconcilable.

[CE]

Because Trump might derail the progressive agenda, while Biden couldn't derail a toy train.

[mad.casual]

Well, they've gotta cover for *somebody*! Whaddyaexpect journalists to do? Report the facts as they know and understand them? Correct the record when they're wrong?

[JeremyR]

The media is largely just an extension of the Democratic party.

[TJJ2000]

^THIS

[VULGAR MADMAN]

You mean THE party don’t you?

[Rick James]

I'm kind of with Michael Malice on this one. Most people say the media is an arm of the DNC, I now believe the DNC is an arm of the media.

[Don't look at me!]

Why the Media Covered for Biden

Cocktail parties.

[JesseAz (5-30 Banana Republic Day)]

This can't be stated enough. Blue urban bubbles taught to hate outside or independent thinking. Fucking cult like. Looking at you Reason.

[VULGAR MADMAN]

Nah, they’re just a bunch of insecure fags.

[Social Justice is neither]

Because most all of you are DNC propagandists

[Public Entelectual]

"Why the Media Covered for Biden"?

You don't want to know:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2024/07/we-hold-these-truths-to-be-self-evident.html

[Don't look at me!]

Fake website.

[JesseAz (5-30 Banana Republic Day)]

Not even a good one.

[Public Entelectual]

How?

[VULGAR MADMAN]

How, injun want heap wampum.

[JesseAz (5-30 Banana Republic Day)]

Don't you mean Hovv?

[sarcasmic]

Am I in time to sneeringly mock the retards?

Nope. They beat me.

[JesseAz (5-30 Banana Republic Day)]

Stop being so hard on yourself. You just got here.

[Bertram Guilfoyle]

You do tend to self-mock.

[Don't look at me!]

Ideas!

[BigT]

Just look in the mirror - any time of the day.

[TJJ2000]

Something, something about threatening letters sent to media outlets with a US Government letter-head and signed by 13-Democrat congressmen????

On one of literally hundreds sent out. Funny how this DNC commandeering the media keeps getting washed under the rug. It's just as bad as all that election fraud plain as day getting washed under the rug over and over and over again.

[Rev Arthur L kuckland (5-30-24 banana republic day)]

What lab leak theory? It came from the Wuhan lab, they are continuing making deadly desieses, and will release another one.
The fact that the fags at reason are still pretending to be libritarian is laughable

[I, Woodchipper]

Why the Media Covered for Biden

Ummm ... is this some kind of mystery to you guys? Lol

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

“Born in the USA” was patriotic in the sense that its message was about how the nation basically shat all over Vietnam veterans and working class people that kept the country running. The real irony wasn’t necessarily the Reaganites adopting it as a de facto anthem, it was that Springsteen’s rad-left, college educated political allies were the ones shitting all over them.

[shadydave]

It sure is a mystery. Can't figure this one out...

[Kungpowderfinger]

Why the Media Covered for Biden

Uh, ever hear of the long march through the institutions?

Although it’s not the old school commies calling the shots in the American Left anymore, rather it appears to be an evil combination of their idiot protégés and globalists. And of course their loyal butt-boys in the legacy media.

[Rick James]

I don't have time to listen to this, but if it contains any chin-scratching, complex theorificationizing, then there's no fucking hope for analyzing the obvious.

[Longtobefree]

Back when he was a comedian, Bill Cosby did a routine about his philosophy major girlfriend going around wondering "why is there air?"
As a P.E. major, he knew already that there is air so you can blow up volleyballs.

Same thing here; the answer is obvious.

[LIBtranslator]

Open the link to the Trumpista MAGAt platform. Search "drug"... Q.E.D. Now search the Dem platform for "energy" and you get essentially the same screed. So you can enjoy very real Prohibition with Crashes and Depressions, plus girl-bullying and racial collectivism. The other alternative is freezing in the dark to avoid Global Warmunism with Sharknados that have NEVER happened outside of Soviet Storyboards. Or believe the looters when they say voting for Chase Oliver is wasted precisely because it's on a better platform.

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

History will judge Biden to have been anti-religion in a big way. The media sensed this and backed him. Biden might say "abortion is wrong" but he never acts onthat

Biden says he's "not big on abortion" because of Catholic faith, but Roe "got it right"

He hired perverts, trans, homosexuals (because they were homosexual) and to my knowledge never said anyting was perverted.

Now he joined the Masons, an automatic excommunicatin. EIther way you defend that it must say one of two things
1) He is so stupid and lazy as to not know that is an excommunication offense.
2) or he does know and doesn't care.

He was the perfect anti-religion President and history will show that was the steam behind that lazy stupid man's ascent.
He mocked 'natural law' at the Thomas hearings and that tipped me off. That is the absolute core of Catholic morality

JP II "Every person sincerely open to truth and goodness can come to recognize in the natural law written in the heart the sacred value of human life".

Pope Benedict

The discernment of truth, or rather any claim to know the truth, is '[that] there must be law that derives from the nature, from the very being, of man himself,' not in the sense that man is the creator of his own moral tenets, but that they are innate to his human nature.

SO you don't take an late-term baby and rip its limbs off and say that is the right thing to do.