Dem
47
GOP
53
We had an interesting question that we're going to share and answer now, as opposed to waiting until the weekend:
You mentioned a couple times that last week was a particularly bad week in politics. There has been so much bad stuff since January 20 that I was wondering, what made last week stand out to you in its badness? Was it mainly the bill the House passed? I was quite surprised by how quickly that was rammed through. I worry about that provision to defund the judiciary.
That's from reader D.S. in Pittsburgh, PA.
We thought about our answer, and certainly, the budget—specifically, the grossly anti-democratic/fascist elements of it—is not good news. There was also the day (last Tuesday) where the amount of incredibly disturbing news was just... out of control—Donald Trump taking the Qatari plane AND holding the selling-the-presidency-to-get-people-to-buy-my-memecoin dinner, the overtly racist decisions to stop oversight of problematic police departments AND to accuse Cyril Ramaphosa of perpetrating white genocide, the sending of people—without due process—to South Sudan, etc. It's also somewhat tough when this happens at exactly the same time that one of us is traveling, leaving the other to engage with the stuff every single day, without respite (though respite was created, by fiat, over the weekend).
That said, the real dealbreaker—more than any of the rest of this—was the Biden cancer news, and the response to it, especially from Trump and the MAGA crowd, but also from some non-MAGA Republicans, and from certain media figures, and even from some Democrats. There was a time—we can remember it—when serious health problems were off-limits, and any person who was stricken, even if they were a public figure, was given some space. Not that (Z) can remember this, mind you, but when Richard Nixon got a severe knee infection during the 1960 campaign, John F. Kennedy sent his (genuine) well-wishes, and suspended his own campaign while Nixon recovered, out of a sense of honor and fair play. It was obviously a different time.
Most people who become president use their high office to try to do their best, as they understand it, for the American people. That understanding might not be agreeable to all of us, and a president is going to make mistakes, often big ones. Still, we believe that Gerald Ford was trying to do his best, as he understood it, and Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush, and Barack Obama, to take four examples. And we think the same is true of Biden, both before the White House, and during. He gave over his life to public service, and now he's both retired and an ailing old man, and people will not leave him alone.
We obviously have no use for the vulgar attempts by Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, etc. to weaponize all of this, and to create a Biden-cancer-dementia-cover-up narrative. But we are almost equally disgusted by CNN entertainer Jake Tapper and his co-author, Axios muckraker Alex Thompson. We imagined that the cancer news would make them think better of doing the normal media tour to promote the book about Biden's alleged mental decline. Ha! How foolish we were! Tapper and Thompson have been absolutely shameless, not only appearing on any outlet that would have them, but throwing out plenty of red meat for the right-wingers who are the target demo for their book. For example, last week, Tapper appeared on Fox and told a story about how he called up Lara Trump and apologized to her, telling her she was right all along about Biden's supposed dementia. Yesterday, Tapper and Thompson were on Piers Morgan, and Tapper decreed that the so-called "Biden cover-up" is "maybe even worse than Watergate."
It is evident that, at least in the world of cable "news," decorum and decency are as passé as fax machines, Jell-O salad and wingtip shoes. Heck, at around the same time Tapper was sharing his insights about Watergate, Alan Dershowitz was on a different show using the Israeli embassy killings to try to hawk HIS book. Clearly, Tapper and Thompson (and Dershowitz) are hoping for a boatload of that sweet, sweet royalty money. It's not a coincidence that they are picking mostly right-wing programming for their appearances, whether it's Fox, or Morgan, or Clay Travis. Oh, and by the way, during the Watergate scandal, Nixon consciously deployed significant elements of both the government and the Republican Party apparatus—sometimes illegally, sometimes just very unethically—against both the Democratic Party and the foundations of democratic government. Even if one accepts the alleged Biden cover-up as truth, the goal was to protect Biden, and his administration continued to function normally and legally. To suggest there is any meaningful parallel between the Biden and Nixon situations serves only to out Tapper as a whore who will do anything to sell books.
As you might be able to tell, we have been building up a head of steam on this subject for several days. And we have a lot to say, so much that if we tried to put it in just one posting, it would be 10,000+ words. This being the case, we're going to split things up over 3 days—today, tomorrow, and Friday. For now, having reminded readers of our perspective, we are going to do two things. The first is share a reader comment we got late last week, from reader F.F. in London, England, UK:
Your pieces this week on BDS seem to me to miss the mark. Without getting into the minutiae, it's clear that Biden was not up for another term, and that his hubris in not dropping out of the race at the right time could be the reason we have Trump as president. So we have a deception and some pretty bad effects downstream of that deception, which are legitimate topics of interest.
This is, in effect, the argument that Tapper, Thompson, et al. are making: This is newsworthy, it's important, it's a legitimate subject of interest.
We have already responded to that basic assertion before, and now we will do so again: Why? Why is it important? And maybe a better way to approach this is to deploy a question we have often used before: What is actionable here? Even if we concede the entire narrative Tapper and Thompson are peddling—Biden was hopelessly compromised, his staff knew that to a certainty, and in response, they engineered a massive cover-up to keep him in office—then what positive good comes from knowing that? What is the value in taking potshots at a sick, old man who is no longer in public life? It is not enough to make vague claims of newsworthiness or significance; those are gut-feel responses. We want to know a specific answer as to WHY it's important to know exactly what happened. Because absent that answer, this is not only taking cheap shots at someone who doesn't deserve it, it's also inadvertently (or deliberately) helping advance Republican messaging about how Democrats are hopelessly dishonest, corrupt, etc., and can't be trusted with power.
Nobody seems to have much of an explanation as to the value of this story, and this book, beyond the vague platitudes about newsworthiness, and we suspect we know why. We'll explain in the other two installments, but for now, we will just say that, unlike so many others we have read on the subject, we actually do have an answer to the question, an answer that was evident in yesterday's posting. Maybe that clue is enough to figure it out; if not, readers will eventually know what we are talking about.
The other thing we are going to do today is share a couple of messages from readers on this subject, messages we thought raised some important points. The first reiterates some of what we've said here, including our finding Tapper's motives to be less-than-honorable. The second talks about one way the latest Biden news COULD be actionable (though it's not anything that Trump, Tapper, etc. are thinking about, and is also not the answer we're going to give later in the week):
D.A.Y. in Troy, MI: My friend's father died from the cancer Joe Biden has been diagnosed with. All I can say is it is a horrible way to die, as he disintegrated from the inside out. In his last months, he was in agony and effectively restricted to the ground floor of his house. One can hope they can mitigate it for Biden, but they might just be delaying the inevitable.
However, I want to talk about how we have treated a President who was not in perfect health. Thank god we did not have the 24/7 news cycle with a camera at every possible angle and social media back in the 1930s and 1940s. Could you imagine FDR having to try to navigate half the bovine excrement Biden was subjected to? The narrative would be about his disability night-in and night-out, with Nazi sympathizers being frequent guests on news outlets. Hitler would also tweet nonstop about how weak America is for allowing itself to be led by a cripple.
Was Biden in perfect health during his presidency? No. He was an 80-year-old man with an 80-year-old man's body and a stutter. Yet, everyone had to jump on any show of physical weakness, no matter how minor.
And frankly, Jake Tapper's new book is only good for lining birdcages. The debate was a disaster because he and Dana Bash let Donald Trump Gish gallop the whole night and did such a bad job moderating that a laptop opened to ChatGPT would have done better. Yet, Tapper wants us all to believe it was because of Biden.
Meanwhile, we now have a raving lunatic as our president. Yet I do not see the mainstream media holding him responsible for his mental state, which is actually damaging the country.
A.H. in Knoxville, TN: First and foremost, I hope that Joe Biden gets the best possible medical care. Advancements in the treatment of prostate cancer are being made every day, and there is a real possibility of his living out the normal lifespan for an otherwise healthy 82 year old.
Second, I hope that Joe Biden uses this as an educational opportunity. As the news reports have pointed out, about one in seven men (and about one in six men of color) will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lifetime. All men 40 and over should be discussing the disease with their primary care physician at each physical. Vince Flynn died at age 47 from prostate cancer. Ben Stiller was diagnosed and treated at age 48. James Michael Tyler died at 59 from the disease. About 10% of the diagnoses occur in men under 55. I was diagnosed with it at 57. Luckily, my doctor still did annual PSA tests and he caught a spike in my PSA level—when diagnosed, I was totally asymptomatic. I have been living with early Stage 4 disease for almost 8 years now, due to the efforts of dedicated top-notch doctors and practitioners, and advancements in medical science.
There is a stigma associated with prostate cancer. My heartfelt advice for your readers is that they do not let that stigma stand in the way of being evaluated by their family doctors. If a person's family history includes prostate cancer, breast cancer, or pancreatic cancer, they may be at a higher risk for developing prostate cancer at a relatively young age. And any of your readers (or readers with loved ones) that have been diagnosed with the disease—please talk about it with your family and friends—you may help someone to be diagnosed and treated early, before symptoms appear, and while the disease remains manageable.
Thanks to both of you. Next installment tomorrow... (Z)