We’ve all heard Republicans spout the party line about President Joe Biden: Not only is he in the throes of mental decline, but he’s also the apparent mastermind behind an entire crime family but can’t remember his own name. Does it make sense? No. Does it have to? Apparently not.
But the problem is that the people who’ve been perpetuating this narrative seem pretty willing to overlook the fact that their political deity, Donald Trump, doesn’t seem to be working with a full deck of cards — a point that’s become progressively evident these past few weeks. Like, for example, when he suggested that he defeated Obama in the 2016 election. Or when he claimed that World War II hadn’t happened yet. Or when he said that Jeb Bush got us into the Iraq War. Not exactly the next Stephen Hawking here.
After years of the Trumpificiation of the GOP, to witness the media still fall for the exact same tricks that brought us Trump in the first place is truly unacceptable.
And not to revert to the familiar refrain, but could you imagine if Joe Biden did any of these things? Could you imagine the wall-to-wall coverage on Fox and the rest of conservative media? The earth could quite literally fall off its axis — that still wouldn’t be enough to knock right-wing media off this news cycle.
And look, I’m not looking to get into the mud about which septuagenarian or octogenarian politician is too old; they’re all old, we get it. But what I will do is point out the obvious, glaring hypocrisy of both Republicans and many in the media who relentlessly hammer Biden on his age, his mental acuity and his fitness to serve when those same people are conveniently silent when Trump says things that are far worse. Running it as front-page news when Biden trips one time, only to then ignore when Trump suggests World War II has yet to take place, betrays right-wing media’s actual goal: It’s not because of any well-founded concern over Biden’s ability to execute the duties of office; it’s just naked partisanship.
But while we expect this kind of hackery from right-wing media, we should demand more from the mainstream media that has arguably learned nothing from 2016 by platforming this blatant propaganda. I was truly hoping we’d come further than watching Fox and other like-minded outlets parade around their talking points about Biden’s age, only to then witness other mainstream outlets take the bait.
But lo and behold, headlines like these are the norm: “Biden’s age may be a growing problem for his reelection” from The Washington Post; “Questions over Biden’s age are getting sharper” from The Hill; “Biden and the ‘Age Question’” from The Wall Street Journal. It would be one thing if we hadn’t already encountered the disastrous consequences of a “both sides” media, but after years of the Trumpificiation of the Republican Party, to witness the media still fall for the exact same tricks that brought us Trump in the first place is truly unacceptable.
The truth is that if this was actually about Biden’s ability to fulfill his duties as president, you don’t have to sit around and play doctor; all you have to do is look at how he’s been fulfilling his duties as president. I don’t need to see the results of Joe Biden’s next colonoscopy to be able to see the American Rescue Plan, which saved the U.S. economy after Covid; to see the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which put people to work after the “infrastructure week” punch lines of the Trump era; to see the gun safety law, the first gun bill passed in three decades; to see the Chips and Sciences Act, which has led to a boom in American manufacturing; to see the PACT Act, which gave desperately needed health care to our veterans; to see the Violence Against Women Act reauthorized; to see a record 13.5 million jobs added and the unemployment rate hit a 50-year low.
Again, we don’t have to guess whether Biden is capable of doing the job, because he’s quite literally already doing it — and I’d argue doing it more effectively than any other president in modern American history.
We don’t have to guess whether Biden is capable of doing the job, because he’s quite literally already doing it
And to be clear, none of this is to deny the validity of anyone’s worries about Biden’s age. He’s old. Too many of our leaders are old. I get it. But aside from the fact that Biden has already proved that he is up to the job because he is currently exceeding expectations while doing the job, let’s also not pretend that we don’t know the stakes in this upcoming election. Our elections are binary; they’re a choice between two people. As of this moment, it certainly does seem that the choice is going to be between an 80-year-old Joe Biden and a 77-year-old Donald Trump.
And I have every ounce of faith in the world that Americans — who, yes, may certainly recognize that Biden is old — won’t make that a higher priority than the fact that his opponent is a dangerous, anti-democratic authoritarian currently contending with four indictments and 91 criminal charges and whose most recent act as president was to incite an insurrection against our own government. So the GOP and its willful accomplices in the media may parrot Republican talking points about Biden’s age until they’re blue in the face, but we won’t be distracted by the same antics they deployed ahead of the 2016 election. We know the stakes of this election, and no amount of right-wing propaganda is going to change that.