Tapper and Thompson Continue Dangerous Cover-Up » The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

Now that Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson have published Original Sin, which confirms what most Americans already knew — that former President Joe Biden was cognitively unfit to carry out the duties of his office — the corporate media are attempting to deflect attention from their complicity in a dangerous cover up. The “original sin,” according to Tapper and Thompson, was Biden’s decision to run for reelection in 2024 and the dishonesty of his aides. A far more egregious sin, however, was the cover-up of Biden’s decline by countless journalists who refused to report the truth.

This dereliction of duty presented a far greater danger to the republic than Biden’s decision to run or the lies of his aides. Thomas Jefferson once observed, “The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty & property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information.” The fundamental purpose of a free press is to provide that information by reporting what government officials are doing and why. Thus, as Marc Thiessen points out in the Washington Post, the corporate media cover-up was the real “original sin.”

Americans began to realize that Biden was suffering from cognitive decline. In November 2021 — after just 10 months of watching him in action — a 48 percent plurality said Biden was not “mentally fit” for office. By June 2023, a year before his disastrous presidential debate performance, the share of Americans who said they had concerns about Biden’s mental and physical health had risen to 68 percent. Yet virtually every news organization in the country downplayed, ignored or helped the White House minimize one of the biggest stories in modern presidential history.

Thiessen goes on to point out the deeply ironic fact that Jake Tapper was one of the worst offenders. Tapper routinely attacked anyone with the temerity to point out what everyone could see, including the one honest Democrat who raised concerns about Biden’s physical and mental fitness for the presidency: When Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) raised the issue, Tapper snidely suggested that his concerns shouldn’t be taken seriously. The best documented case of Tapper’s participation in the widespread cover-up was his now notorious claim that Lara Trump was mocking Biden’s fictitious stutter by mentioning his cognitive decline.

But Tapper’s obvious hypocrisy is not what should scare Americans. Original Sin is a classic example of a “partial hangout,” a type of deception whereby the confession of a relatively minor offense is used to establish credibility for someone covering up far more dangerous offenses. When Tapper and Thompson claim they “missed” the whole story of Biden’s cognitive decline because his aides lied to them, they are attempting to avoid questions about the complicity of the corporate media in a potentially dangerous cover-up. Journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon asked that question during a recent edition of “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News:

Of  course the people in Biden’s orbit were trying to protect him. That makes sense. The question is: Why was the media carrying water for the Democratic Party? And the answer is because they were deathly afraid that Donald Trump would win — not because he was a threat to democracy the way they’re always saying — but because his policies represent a threat to the hegemony of the elites. The media in America are part of the elite and so their interests — their economic interests — are aligned with the rich and that is why they carry water for the Democrats. It is so simple.

It is indeed. Ungar-Sargon was describing an industry-wide conflict of interest that prevents news organizations from running honest stories about the politicians who share their socio-economic networks. High profile journalists have degrees from the same elite universities, live in the same neighborhoods, send their children to the same schools, eat at the same restaurants and attend the same social events as the politicians they cover. These journalists and politicians, for all intents and purposes, belong to an exclusive club whose members have never met an actual MAGA voter except perhaps when they had to call a plumber or electrician.

If there is any confusion as to why this is dangerous, consider what Jake Tapper’s co-author Alex Thompson revealed about how Biden’s inner circle planned to manage his second term if he had not imploded during his only debate with Trump. One aide put it thus: “He just had to win, and then he could disappear … he’d only have to show proof of life every once in a while.” Considering the cascading disasters that characterized Biden’s term in office, the people who produced them would have been in charge until 2029. The media would have continued the cover-up and the fate of the nation would have been decided by an anonymous “politburo.”

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