‘You saw it before your eyes,’ NBC News’ Chuck Todd admitted following debate
Jesse Watters: The cheap fake narrative is dont believe your eyes
Radio host Dana Loesch shares how Democrats will cheap fake their way to the 2024 presidential election.
President Biden’s allies in the liberal media fumed over Special Counsel Robert Hur calling him an "elderly man with a poor memory," attempted to discredit a critical Wall Street Journal report about his behind-the-scenes demeanor, and even referred to on-camera examples of the president’s advanced age as "cheap fakes."
But then Biden took the debate stage and was widely criticized for looking and sounding frail and listless, repeatedly losing his train of thought mid-sentence, and accelerating concerns about his age and mental viability.
And the media about-face has been noteworthy. Shortly after the conclusion of Thursday night's debate, NBC's Chuck Todd offered some telling analysis of his performance.
"At the end of the day, Joe Biden looks like the caricature that conservative media has been painting, and there were no clips tonight," Todd said. "You saw it before your eyes."
President Joe Biden walks off stage during the CNN Presidential Debate at the CNN Studios on June 27, 2024, in Atlanta, Georgia. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
After months of robust defense of Biden's mental acuity in the face of videos, reports and the special counsel investigation, numerous liberal pundits - some of them open White House supporters - were gnashing their teeth beginning Thursday and even expressing sorrow.
The Free Press founder Bari Weiss angrily wrote the debate was a "catastrophe for an entire class of experts, journalists, and pundits, who have, since 2020, insisted that Biden was sharp as a tack." She said he was not fit for office and laid out examples of Biden media sycophants who boosted the narrative that he was energetic and engaged earlier this year, such as MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and "The View" co-host Ana Navarro.
Indeed, there was suddenly a deluge of concern, hand-wringing and outright panic among Democrats and media allies of Biden on Thursday. Some, like CNN's Van Jones, had warned going in that Biden had to avoid a "senior moment," but after his high-octane State of the Union address, there appeared to be confidence that he would rise to the occasion.
Now, one White House reporter told Fox News Digital, the administration can't get around what it tried so hard to dismiss before.
"White House can't blacklist all of us, and everyone has to ask about his age now," they said. "It's inescapable."
On three major news occasions this year, many media outlets and figures rallied to Biden's defense in the face of evidence of his decline.
Special Counsel Hur absolved Biden of criminal wrongdoing in February relating to his handling of classified documents because he is an "elderly man with a poor memory." After the report came out, CNN commentator and longtime Democratic strategist Paul Begala insisted that people who'd worked with Biden told him personally he was "totally focused" and "very sharp."
BIDENWORLD, MEDIA ALLIES RUN WITH ‘GRATUITOUS’ TALKING POINT IN RESPONSE TO SPECIAL COUNSEL REPORT
"He’s actually perfectly sharp, he’s up to the job," he said.
At the time, CNN's Anderson Cooper was also eager to boost Biden.
"I did a 30, 40-minute sitdown interview with President Biden about grief," Cooper said. "I was sitting two feet from him across the table, and he was very good. People can listen to the podcast. In that format, he was incredibly heartfelt and intense and got across exactly what he wanted to say."
Fast-forward to four months later, and Cooper was arguing with Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday night about whether the same man she described as hyper-competent and engaged was the one everyone saw on the debate stage, looking and sounding unsure and unfocused.
Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer complained at the time the Hur report was a "partisan hit job."
The Hur report was also met with derision from top Biden officials at the time, including Vice President Harris and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. Harris called Hur's remarks about Biden's mental fitness "gratuitous," a talking point matched by liberal media figures like the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart, MSNBC's Neal Katyal and CNN's Norm Eisen.
"We have spent way too much time talking about this president's age," Capehart said on PBS.
In a June report titled "Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping," the Wall Street Journal outlined several instances where Biden made gaffes and displayed low energy in meetings with lawmakers and officials, citing dozens of interviews with Republicans and Democrats who either participated in meetings with Biden or were briefed on them at the time.
Thomas Friedman and Joe Biden split image (Getty Images)
Left-wing writer Brian Beutler complained the piece was an "egregious hit job," while CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy erupted at the piece in his polemic newsletter.
Darcy, who previously wrote that Hur's depiction of Biden's mental state "didn’t match reality" based on reports, insisted the Journal's report "suffers from glaring problems," lecturing the paper "it "owes its readers — and the public — better."
"It is difficult to imagine that the newspaper, or any outlet, would run a similar story declaring that Trump is ‘slipping’ behind the scenes based on the word of top Democratic figures — despite the fact that the Democratic leadership has demonstrated a much stronger relationship with the truth in recent years than their Republican counterparts," Darcy wrote.
"More broadly speaking, The Journal’s piece pointed to a continued problem roiling the news media as it covers the 2024 election. Trump is permitted to fall asleep in court and make nonsensical public statements on a routine basis without any serious questions raised about his mental acuity," the CNN pundit continued. "Meanwhile, Biden is judged on an entirely different standard."
MSNBC's "Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarborough declared the report a "Trump hit piece on Biden," and left-wing media watchdog group Media Matters called the report "comically weak."
"Is it a fairly reported story on a pertinent topic? Or is it a pointed piece based pretty much on quotes and opinions from those who don’t want to see Biden elected to a second term? I’d go with the latter — considering the money quote is from McCarthy, another key anecdote was reported by current Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, and other tales suggesting Biden’s decline are flimsy, at best," Poynter Institute's Tom Jones ruled.
Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker said she feels "very much" vindicated following the debate.
"The reporters took a lot of grief for covering a story that needed to be covered and that no other main stream publishers were willing to touch. I am very proud of them," Tucker told Semafor.
WHITE HOUSE 'CHEAP FAKES' RESPONSE TO BIDEN VIDEOS PART OF PUSH FOR SOCIAL MEDIA CENSORSHIP: EXPERT
Then came the "cheap fakes" ordeal last month, when White House officials dismissed a series of viral videos that appeared to show Biden confused and dottering at a series of public events, such as at a G7 event in Italy or a fundraiser with former President Obama and Jimmy Kimmel.
Liberal critics cried that, for instance, cropped video of him wandering away from a group at the Italy summit was misleading since he was greeting a landing paratrooper, but conservatives said his demeanor was still indicative of his diminished mental state.
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates and Jean-Pierre insisted the videos were "cheap fakes," and the press largely ran with the message.
MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace condemned the "highly misleading and selectively edited videos" while also not showing all the raw footage from a Los Angeles fundraiser, where Biden was guided off the stage by former President Obama. A rabid Biden supporter, she added it was an "insidious" trend from right-wing media.
"We've been worried for years about AI deepfakes that computer generated images are going to trick people into believing something that's totally false. Cheap fakes are a little bit simpler," former CNN host Brian Stelter said. "They're cheap. They're just distorted out of context videos chopped up in certain ways, constructed in certain ways. That's what we're seeing."
The Washington Post elevated the term "cheap fakes," telling readers such "deceptively edited videos… misrepresent events simply by manipulating video or audio, or by leaving out context" and that they've "become staples of Republican attacks against Biden."
The New York Times ran a story with the headline "How Misleading Videos Are Trailing Biden as He Battles Age Doubts," insisting the viral clips were either "edited or lack[ed] context," and CBS News released a report sounding the alarm on "cheap fakes" and their impact on the upcoming election, echoing the White House's claim that Biden is "victim to a simpler version of ‘deepfakes.’"
The White House and its media allies were essentially telling voters not to believe their eyes, but many have taken another glance following the debate. The New York Times editorial board even called for Biden to step aside.
Scarborough, who earlier this year said Biden was the best he'd ever been intellectually, wondered aloud to his audience on Friday if a Fortune 500 corporation would keep a CEO on after a similar performance. Frequent show guest Donny Deutsch, after calling Biden a "hero," said he was no longer the best choice for the Democrats.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, a close friend of Biden, told him to step aside after a debate performance that made him "weep," claiming he had previously found him cogent in their one-on-one engagements. So did fellow Times columnists Nicholas Kristof and Paul Krugman.
That was the tip of the iceberg, as several co-hosts of "The View" and multiple newspaper editorial boards were among the other pro-Biden voices who've said it's time for him to move on.
Political satirist Tim Young joked on X, "Just remember: All the unedited clips of Joe Biden spacing out and rambling during the debate... are just cheap fakes."
Fox News Digital's Jamie Joseph contributed to this report.
