I'm a journalist. Democrats made my job harder by hiding Biden's health decline.

Yahoo

2 days ago

The newest Biden-focused book to hit the market pulls no punches on its central premise. It's right there in the title: 'Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.'
Two other books examining Biden's awkward, ill-timed handoff to Kamala Harris and Trump's subsequent re-election were also published this spring. Though less forward in their focus, the narratives of 'Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House' and 'Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History' also — inevitably — take a close look at Biden's flagging mental fitness.
'I have fresh reporting on an hour-by-hour, day-by-day basis of Biden's final days, and obviously his decline is a major part of the story,' Chris Whipple, author of 'Uncharted,' told Politico.
Meanwhile, 'Fight' reveals that Harris aides 'strategized around the possibility that Biden might die in office' while, at an event two days after the debate that sealed Biden's campaign fate, fluorescent tape was affixed to the venue's carpet, serving as 'colorful bread crumbs [that] showed the leader of the free world where to walk.'
The literary flurry around Biden's health is a testament to the nature of the book industry and the arms race among the Big 5 publishers. No one wants to be scooped or outsold. But the flood of Biden books ('2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America' is set to release in July), also speaks to the gravity of the subject at hand.
'I happen to think that to call it a 'cover-up' is simplistic,' said Whipple. 'I think it was stranger and way more troubling than that.'
He's right, but for reasons beyond the obvious sabotage of the 2024 election.
Because let's be clear: There wasn't a single person who saw Biden or heard him speak during the last year or so of his term who honestly believed he was 100% fit to be president.
So instead of an honest conversation about Biden's health and mental facilities, Americans got a constant stream of gaslighting and false assurances.
Instead of an opportunity to choose, via primary, the candidate who would represent the party in the November presidential election, Democratic voters were force-fed Harris in the 11th hour. She was a welcome pick for some, to be sure, but a tragic miscalculation for others.
And all of it, of course, was fueled by a White House eager to pump the media with statements and stories to counter the legitimate speculation about the president's faculties.
Republican voters — near- and far-right alike — have been complaining about 'fake news' since Trump's first term, and here Democrats were, piling it on thick.
As a journalist, it's infuriating.
Not because I was somehow duped into believing Biden was healthy, but because I am on the front lines, writing about what's going in our world — explaining, educating, providing necessary historical context — and constantly battling readers who think I'm making it all up.
Opinion: Jackie Robinson is a Civil Rights hero. DEI helped him make history
Anything that makes them uncomfortable? Fake news.
Anything related to ongoing racial injustice? Definitely fake news.
Anything that runs counter to the narrative they've already crafted in their minds? More. Fake. News.
I've written plenty of columns that anger folks on the left as well, like when I questioned the focus on appealing to a wider audience during last summer's Democratic National Convention, instead of shoring up votes among the core base. Or when I then pointed to their too-late, surface-level overtures to Black men that ultimately resulted in 21% sliding to the right in November.
But the difference between Democrat and Republican pushback to my columns is that, while the former group will disagree with my take on the facts, the latter disputes the facts altogether.
Indeed, disbelief in journalism on the whole is a typically Republican phenomenon. And it's one that has been undoubtedly fueled by Democrats' unwillingness to tell the truth about their former leader.
Opinion: Trump voluntarily left office. Biden had to be shoved aside. That's the real sin.
There are plenty who would argue that the media was equally complicit in the Biden 'cover-up,' that journalists were all too willing to abdicate their reporting responsibilities, take whatever the Biden administration served them, and run it.
Maybe they don't remember that journalists were saying something. Maybe they don't remember that those protestations were drowned out by the barrage of voices who wanted — needed — to keep the White House blue.
I also hear Democrats speak often about this critical moment in American history, with our very democracy on the line. They're right. But they must not remember how important journalism is in upholding any democracy.
Perhaps if they did, they'd understand that the same danger that arises when a billionaire newspaper owner dictates the paper's opinion coverage is present when a group of political insiders lie to the public, and the media, about the president's health.
And they'd understand that now, all of us — journalists included — have to pay for their decisions.
Andrea Williams is an opinion columnist for The Tennessean and curator of the Black Tennessee Voices initiative. She has an extensive background covering country music, sports, race and society. Email her at [e-mail] or follow her on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @AndreaWillWrite and BlueSky at @andreawillwrite.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Biden's health coverup by Democrats made more 'fake news' | Opinion