I wrote earlier about the media effort to spin and “sandbag” us over Joe Biden’s fall at the Air Force Academy commencement.
After the media made a huge deal of former President Donald Trump walking slowly down a slippery ramp in 2020, talking about how that somehow might indicate a health condition, they showed once again how biased they are with the takes about Biden’s real plunge. They were doing all they could to downplay it and ignoring that this wasn’t just a one-off but part of a whole panoply of things showing he is unfit. But the media has largely turned away from recognizing that or pressuring the White House for answers.
There was one take I didn’t want to leave out — from presidential historian Michael Beschloss. Now Beschloss is a rabid liberal and a huge Trump hater. Trump seems to have broken him as he’s broken so many on the left. But naturally, he was all in trying to spin for Biden. He tweeted about Jimmy Carter staggering during a race in 1979 and Gerald Ford falling down the stairs of Air Force One in 1975.
However, Jimmy Carter was running a six-mile race and Gerald Ford was walking down very slippery metal steps. They weren’t just walking across a stage, as Joe Biden was doing. Plus they were otherwise both very healthy and didn’t have other issues as Biden has continuously had. Not the same at all and you can’t normalize Biden’s issues with pictures like this.
But if Beschloss was trying to normalize Biden, he also doesn’t seem to get what he did by posting these pictures. In point of fact, both these photos caused a fury of attention. The picture of Carter caused people to wonder if he had health problems and sparked questions if he’d had a heart attack.
But far worse than that was what the picture did to Gerald Ford. Ford was in great shape and had been a good athlete. But the fall was mocked by Saturday Night Live, and he was made the butt of incessant jokes that he was a klutz. It was very unfair. It followed him through his whole term and the rest of his life. It likely contributed to him losing to Carter.
Instead, Beschloss posting these pictures shows just how unnatural the political atmosphere is now and how a lot of the media is operating like scribes for Biden and the Democratic Party. Instead of looking at a variety of the real issues that plague the president, this tumble is barely being mentioned today and/or is being downplayed. Then it will be dismissed, just like Biden’s other falls and gaffes. Instead of being the representatives of the people, liberal journalists have become shills for the powerful.
