Although we had learned to avoid discussions of politics when visiting, in the summer of 2020 a relative and I briefly opened the Pandora’s Box by talking of the upcoming presidential election. “I’m voting for Biden,” she said, a declaration which, given her loathing for Donald Trump, was about as remarkable to me as the noonday sun.

“You do know he’s showing signs of senility, right?” I asked.

“Oh, Jeff!” she scoffed, and there the discussion ended.

So, a question: How is it possible that this intelligent woman had never come across any speculation about her candidate’s mental fitness while a guy like me, with little medical knowledge, could assert—correctly as it turned out—that her team captain’s brain might well need a cane? 

The answer is simple. Every evening, my relative sits in front of her television and takes her news from left-wing outfits like CNN and MSNBC. In contrast, I glean my daily news online from right-wing sites like Breitbart and the American Spectator.

In addition to the contradictory political slants of these sources are the differences in the means of communication. The stories on her televised broadcasts generally run between one and two minutes, tossing the viewer from the war in Gaza to a Senate hearing on AI replicas to a hurricane approaching Jamaica. The articles from which I receive my news take longer to absorb, as they usually focus on a single topic and allow time for reflection.

Because some of the articles I’d been reading relayed information about Biden’s cognitive decline, and because the former vice-president largely conducted his campaign from his basement, it was obvious to me that he had a problem.

Which brings me to the June 27 debate between former President Trump and President Biden: the upheavals that have followed in the wake of the latter’s horrible performance, the reaction of the legacy media, and the false hopes some on the right place in the subsequent enlightenment of their television-watching fellow Americans.

For those of us familiar with President Biden’s cognitive issues, the debate brought few surprises. The confusion, the mumbled responses, and the vacant face and eyes had marked many of his public appearances in the last four years, particularly in the last few months.

Like many on the right, I found the shock expressed by so many in his party and especially by the media grimly amusing. Until the debate, politicians, celebrities, and journalists had assured the American people time and again that the president was sharp, on the ball, and in the game. Many of them surely knew better, but they never broke ranks or stopped singing from the same hymnal. If you’re looking for some amusement, pause here and watch the six-minute YouTube compilation “Sharp as a Tack,” with its mix of pre-debate media reassurances about the acuity of the president sprinkled with moments from the debate itself. 

Some commentators on the right believe that this coverup and gaslighting will bring enormous scandal to the media, that there will finally be an easing of journalistic prejudice in reporting the news. Here I must disagree. They’ll retain their core audience. The Americans who watch CNN or other mainstream outlets will, from habit, either go on watching and believing them or choose to believe that the newscasters and reporters were hoodwinked along with everyone else.

Nor will the legacy media strive for greater objectivity, as some outsiders hope. That option isn’t even on the table. The education of most journalists, their training, their status, and the milieu in which they work eliminate any possibility of change. They’re psychologically incapable of aiming at objectivity. A few reporters might wake up, kick aside their bigotry, and decide to dig into the news rather than merely echo what they hear from the government and the Democratic Party, but odds are most of them will continue along their present path.

In his American Thinker article “Biden’s Dementia: What Did They Know and When Did They Know It?” Brian C. Joondeph provides an excellent analysis of the crisis brought on by the debate. He asks the right questions, like “Who’s really in charge?” “And why and for how long has this been covered up?” and “What changed in a few months, from Biden being ‘mentally sharp’ to ‘he needs to drop out of the race?’”

Near the end of his piece, Joondeph writes, “What did they know and when did they know it? Will the media ask?”

President’s Biden’s clear deficiencies, visible to millions of viewers, have forced the mainstream press to express their dismay and raise some questions, but that’s not enough. I would ask, “Will they investigate how things came to such a pass?”

As my grandmother was fond of saying, “I wouldn’t make book on it.”