Liberals boasted that the election of Joe Biden meant a return to sober, restrained presidential rhetoric and an end to unhinged mean tweets. Biden wouldn’t be a divider; he’d be a uniter to get things done. That’s nothing like current reality. But when Biden uncorks crazy hot talk, the media are supportive repeaters.
On July 16, NBC reporter Peter Alexander tossed a softball: “On COVID misinformation, what’s your message to platforms like Facebook?” Biden gave a wild-eyed answer: “They’re killing people.” He said it twice. NBC, as well as CBS and PBS, just passed it along — with some Facebook denial that they were murderers — and no fact-checking or Republican rebuttal emerged. ABC’s “World News Tonight” skipped it, like it was embarrassing.
After the weekend, Biden bizarrely walked it back. “My hope is that Facebook, instead of taking it personally that somehow I’m saying ‘Facebook is killing people,’ that they would do something about the misinformation,” Biden said. That’s literally what he said — and journalists didn’t seem to find it was even impolite to Facebook.
On July 13, the president unleashed a hyperbolic speech in Philadelphia on voting-integrity bills. He accused Republicans of “An assault on democracy, an assault on liberty, an assault on who we are — who we are as Americans. … This is election subversion. It’s the most dangerous threat to voting and the integrity of free and fair elections in our history.”
He mangled history: “We are facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War. That’s not hyperbole.” And he said, “The 21st-century Jim Crow assault is real. It’s unrelenting, and we’re going to challenge it vigorously.”
So, Biden can suggest today’s Republicans are just like southern Democrats who enforced a rigid regime of racial segregation and mob lynchings. In other venues, Biden has poisonously claimed the Republicans made “Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle” and represent “Jim Crow on steroids.”
This latest mean-spirited, mudslinging speech was hailed by the network anchors. David Muir on ABC touted the president “blasting what he calls attacks on voting rights.” Norah O’Donnell on CBS proclaimed Biden was “speaking out forcefully.” On NBC, Lester Holt announced, “In some of his strongest language yet, President Biden today blasting Republican efforts to restrict voting access as un-American and a test of our democracy.”
The front page of The New York Times the next day carried the headline “Biden Portrays a Right to Vote as Under Siege.” The “Jim Crow” junk was quoted in the very last paragraph.
Five days later, ABC “This Week” moderator Martha Raddatz was still praising this attack as “a very impassioned speech to defend voting rights,” and AP Washington bureau chief Julie Pace added, “Rhetorically, Biden is saying all of the right things that Democrats want to hear.” But both admitted the Democrat push for their For the People Act is dead in the water.
Enough time has elapsed to evaluate how the fact-checkers performed on this wild “Jim Crow assault” talk. Did AP Fact Check have it? No. CNN Facts First team? No. The Washington Post Fact Checker? No. FactCheck.org? No. Snopes? No. PolitiFact? No.
Amazingly, PolitiFact did check one statement in this speech: Biden proclaiming, “In 2020, more people voted in America than ever in the history of America.” They awarded him a “Mostly True” rating for that.
This is an ongoing pattern. The so-called independent fact-checkers have given Biden a free pass to smear Republicans with a “Jim Crow” brush. It’s fair for Biden to accuse them of the worst attack on voting rights since the Civil War. He isn’t checked by journalists. He’s praised for “speaking out forcefully.”
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
slo joe the demented, the babbling baffoon, slurring his words while stammering out incomprehensible garbage, makes chimpanzees look like Rhodes scholars.
Oh, for the days when American Presidents had the clarity of mind to write their own speeches which forced them to workable thoughts and solutions instead of taking the path of least resistance by just mouthing the biased agenda of others who cannot be trusted in fairness. Blatherskite Biden can talk for hours and NOBODY can understand what he just said, certainly not other nervous world leaders. When we take over both Houses of Congress the first deed of action is to demand a mental examination of both he and Harris, starting with the simple question, “If someone illegally votes, does that not disenfranchise and cancel the legal American voter?” When they both answer no, on the lie detector,,, IMPEACH.
I wonder, which president was the first to use PAID FOR SPEACH writers!?
This is how the leftist democrat party works, even attemmpting to pack.the Supreme Court. Justice Breyer is being pressured to retire. So Biden can ” Pack the CourtJustice Breyer Warn s against Packing the Court ” FromUV UnitedVloice.
Andd unfortunately with how SPINELESS the entire bloody GOP has shown themselves, to be, i can SEE THE demented left getting their way, yet again.
There is no need to expect neither the Media nor fact checkers to call Biden to account for anything. The Media and all associated with it are an extension of the Democrat Party—it is not going to change. It is time to stop hollering about it. It is wrong and it is frustrating—and they know that, but it is all part of the game for them.
Now, the people who should be going right back at them are doing what? Republicans in Congress, where in the hell are you people? Do you enjoy being punching bags and being falsely accused on a daily basis? Is there no fight in any of you? Where is your righteous anger? Where is your voice? I have never seen such a timid bunch of worthless pansies. The Libs are firing rockets and you people are still using water pistols. Enough already—give ’em hell and then some. Your constituents out here want brawlers who will take a stand and not back down. You guys are not doing the job—get with it!
They are too busy kissing the butts of the dems, to EVER DARE call them out for their bull.
Joe “Jim Crow” Biden, the arbiter of “Pravda Truth”, in collusion with Facebook to censor the truth. Joe Biden, in which his open borders is enriching the drug cartels. “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;” Hey Joe, what Constitution are you supporting and defending? Joe, you are not defending the Constitution of the United States, you are defending the Constitution of communism.
If Joe Biden is speaking his mind as many Democrats say he is we are getting a glimpse into a very shattered and disconnested brain. The synapses are not ntworking properly and information is leaking out that downright scary as gaps begin to fill in.
Was Ole Joe around during the Jim Crow era? That’s all he seems to talk about. In his mind, what’s left of it, he’s an “expert” on the subject.
He certainly has an obsession with it, doesn’t he? Probably thinks Sheryl Crow (the recording artist) is Jim’s sister—and I’m kinda surprised he hasn’t tried to make such a connection.
Well, since ONE OF HIS IDOLS, was a democrat who WAS THE GRAND MASTER of the KKK, i wouldn’t be shocked to see he was a relic from the grand days OF jim crow.
Biden should not be allowed to make any decisions on anything until he has been tested for dementia and/or Alzheimer’s. He is not rational and quite frankly as he said when signing executive orders “I don’t know what I’m signing “. We need private undercover, under, under investigators to expose the Biden puppeteers.
Double standard. Dem “Prez” can talk gibberish, sling gross exaggerations and gets reported positively by the same media that needed smelling salts for Trump’s far more defensible utterances.