President Joe Biden fell down — again.
But the liberal media arrived quickly to try to lift him up. In a fawning profile, The New York Times described the 80-year-old president as “sharp,” “fit,” and having “striking stamina.” The Washington Post, meanwhile, said Biden’s tumble helps make him appear “more human” — then listed a bunch of other times politicians fell down.
The Times piece, which took four reporters to write — including the top two White House correspondents — was headlined, “Inside the Complicated Reality of Being America’s Oldest President.” The article said Biden’s aides limit his time in the spotlight to avoid gaffes.
“The two Joe Bidens coexist in the same octogenarian president: Sharp and wise at critical moments, the product of decades of seasoning, able to rise to the occasion even in the dead of night to confront a dangerous world,” the article said. “Yet a little slower, a little softer, a little harder of hearing, a little more tentative in his walk, a little more prone to occasional lapses of memory in ways that feel familiar to anyone who has reached their ninth decade or has a parent who has.”
The writers don’t call out the many false memories Biden repeats ad nauseam, instead saying, “Like many his age, Mr. Biden repeats phrases and retells the same story, often fact-challenged stories again and again. He can be quirky; when children visit, he may randomly pull a book by William Butler Yeats off his desk and start reading Irish poetry to them.”
And even though Biden shuffles everywhere he goes — which prompted him to fall over a sandbag as he oversaw the graduation ceremony at the U.S. Air Force Academy last week — the Times said: “At the same time, he is trim and fit, exercises five days a week and does not drink.”
Jon Nicosia, president of News Cycle Media, ripped the Times piece.
“A 4-writer slobbering piece on Biden’s age from @nytimes with gems like: ‘Yet people who deal with him regularly, including some of his adversaries, say he remains sharp and commanding in private meetings. Diplomats share stories of trips to places like Ukraine, Japan, Egypt, Cambodia and Indonesia in which he often outlasts younger colleagues. Democratic lawmakers point to a long list of accomplishments as proof that he still gets the job done,'” he wrote on Twitter.
National Review contributor Pradheep Shanker said Biden’s fall and poor health are indicative of something far more nefarious.
“What’s more likely is that many, many of the presidential level decisions are not being made by Biden at all,” he wrote on Twitter.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post put its own positive spin on Biden’s clumsy fall.
“President Biden’s onstage tumble at the U.S. Air Force Academy made headlines around the world. But he’s far from the only world leader or political candidate who has taken a highly visible fall,” wrote Adela Suliman, described as “a breaking-news reporter in The Washington Post’s London hub.”
“Trips and tumbles are fodder for laughs, cringes — and hot takes,” she wrote.
“It breaks the image of infallibility of powerful figures,” Bart Cammaerts, a professor of politics and communication at the London School of Economics, told the Post.
“But there is also something captivating about politicians appearing more human. ‘Think of slapstick comedy, breaking the seriousness and ceremonial aspect of the event,’ Cammaerts said.”
Then Suliman listed a bunch of times other politicians fell, such as President Gerald Ford, Britain’s former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and, of course, the very famous Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt.
The Post even included a time that former President Donald Trump did not fall.
“Trump, as president, looked unsteady on his feet at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 2020. His slow, unsteady walk while descending a ramp led his critics to use the hashtag #TrumpIsNotWell,” Suliman wrote. “Trump tweeted that the ramp was ‘very long & steep, had no handrail and, most importantly, was very slippery’ and insisted that the ‘last thing I was going to do is ‘fall’ for the Fake News to have fun with.'”
But falls for an 80-year-old can be very dangerous. And The New York Post wrote a piece about that last week headlined, “Kamala Harris is a Biden fall away from being in the Oval Office.”
“It was alarming to watch Joe Biden take a tumble Thursday at the Air Force Academy commencement,” Michael Goodwin wrote. “But the really scary thought is that if he had landed head-first, Kamala Harris would be sitting in the Oval Office.”
Food for thought, indeed.
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