A Question For the White House Press Corps

On September 22, 2018, a year and a half into the Trump presidency, the New York Times’s Chief White House Correspondent, Peter Baker, published a piece entitled, “Talk of the 25th Amendment Underscores a Volatile Presidency.” It was the first major airing of 25th Amendment conversations about Donald Trump.

Throughout the course of the Trump Administration, the 25th Amendment kept coming up in news reports. If Donald Trump walked slowly or awkwardly drank a glass of water, the 25th amendment came up again in press reports.

Peter Baker has not written anything about the 25th Amendment related to Joe Biden. In fact, on July 5, 2024, Peter Baker instead wrote a fawning profile of the Democrats’ “open conversation” about Joe Biden contrasted to the Republicans closing ranks around Donald Trump, “a convicted felon.”

To show you how echo-chambery the press is, Baker’s piece appeared the morning of July 5, and later that day Brian Stelter went on CNN to talk to former Obama employee turned CNN Anchor Jim Scuitto and claimed the press, which had behind the public on opinions about Biden had now rushed ahead of the public on Biden. Likewise, parroting Baker, Stelter opined that this just showed the asymmetry of the parties, with one having an open conversation about replacing its candidate and the other refusing to do so.

Stelter can pat himself on the back for parroting Baker from that morning, but both missed a key point.

The Republicans went through an open primary process with multiple vigorous debates and the voters chose to stick with Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, the Democrats shut down primaries, punished states that went out of turn and stacked the deck for Joe Biden.

The only reason Democrats are now having their open conversation is that they, with a great assist from the American press corp, tried to cover up Joe Biden’s decline. The press corps and Democrats have engaged in a systematic gaslighting of the public and, only now that it has failed, they are having this discussion and the partisan press is spinning it as healthy — healthy to now undo a primary process because the coverup failed.

Reporters need to answer a very basic question: if you were not complicit in the coverup, how is it that you all were caught off guard when random Twitter accounts for four years have been publicly pointing out Joe Biden’s physical and cognitive decline?

Take a listen.