Opinion - Too little, too late: A media in crisis blames Democrats for the Biden cover-up

In May 2025, days before it was announced that former President Biden had been diagnosed with cancer, NBC ran a sensational headline: 'Biden didn't recognize George Clooney at June fundraiser: new book.' It cited 'Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,' co-authored by CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios's Alex Thompson, detailing how the president's team concealed his cognitive and physical decline — and raising ethical questions about transparency.
Tapper now claims that the White House 'was lying … to the press, the public, their own Cabinet.' But as a journalist, Tapper's surprise is both revealing and disingenuous. His book shifts blame to Democrats, ignoring how the media aided the cover-up. It's the latest in a string of reputation-saving moves from a media industry in crisis.
Credibility in journalism — hard to earn, easy to lose — once demanded rigorous objectivity. Olivia Nuzzi was fired from The New Yorker merely for private contact with RFK Jr., not even for proven bias. But such standards already seem archaic. During COVID-19, CNN's Chris Cuomo used his show to flatter his brother, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), masking Andrew's deadly mismanagement of nursing homes and corruption, behind jokes about Q-tips.
The abandonment of objectivity accelerated with Donald Trump's rise. In 2016, New York Times writer Jim Rutenberg and Univision's Jorge Ramos argued objectivity should give way to moral clarity. But this rationalization led to partisan reporting, such as the Russiagate exaggerations and slanted pandemic coverage. In trying to 'save democracy,' journalists undermined the very pillar that sustains it.
By Biden's inauguration, the press seemed to have learned nothing. CNN's David Chalian likened spotlights to Biden's 'arms embracing America.' Wolf Blitzer said Biden 'put his soul' into his speech. NBC's Chuck Todd dubbed him 'the Better Angels president.' Meanwhile, the media dismissed or mocked concerns about Biden's mental acuity, even as video evidence suggested otherwise.
Biden confused even basic facts — calling himself the 'first Black woman' to serve in the White House and declaring that 'I wouldn't have picked vice president Trump to be vice president,' not to mention his glitch at a concert and his lack of focus at a G-7 event. Each time, the press downplayed the issue. MSNBC dismissed cognitive concerns as 'hysteria' and used terms like 'cheap fakes' to discredit video evidence. Others, such as The View's Whoopi Goldberg, dismissed the importance of the president's cognitive abilities, and exclaimed that she does not care 'if he's pooped his pants,' she is voting for him anyway.
Similarly, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough responded to those questioning Biden's cognitive ability with an 'F you' on the air. Scarborough had argued a mere three months before the debate that Biden 'is far beyond cogent … in fact, I think he is better than he has ever been,' and this is 'the best Biden ever.'
This dismissal continued even after a Department of Justice investigator, Robert Hur, described Biden as a 'well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.' In response, media personalities attacked Hur instead of engaging with the facts. However, now new audio has leaked of the interviews, giving weight to Hur's contention that Biden behaved like an unfocused and confused elder.
Biden's disastrous June 2024 debate, where he blanked mid-sentence and claimed 'We finally beat Medicare,' ended the charade. He soon dropped out. When Kamala Harris's chaotic campaign also failed, media credibility cratered. MSNBC lost 61 percent of its key demographic post-election, while audiences turned to outlets like MeidasTouch.
In response, some journalists tried rebranding. Chris Cuomo adopted populist critiques of both parties, conveniently forgetting his own CNN record. Tapper, meanwhile, portrays himself as deceived, positioning his book as a reckoning. But 'Original Sin' evades the real question: did this cover-up begin before the election?
The answer is yes — and Tapper was part of it.
Concerns about Biden's cognition emerged well before 2020. During a 2019 debate, Julián Castro asked the president if he was 'forgetting' his own statements. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) publicly worried about Biden's ability to 'carry the ball' without 'fumbling.' Yet the press framed criticisms as attacks on a childhood stutter. Around that same time, journalist Ryan Grim described Biden's debate performance as 'staggeringly incoherent.' -The press failed to adequately address these concerns until five years later.
Even by 2020, the year of the election, the red flags were impossible to miss. Biden fabricated stories about being in a war zone, called a voter 'fat' for no apparent reason, told Charlamagne Tha God 'If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black' and misnamed his own campaign website as 'Joe 3-0-3-3-0' instead of JoeBiden2020.com.
These were just a few of the many moments, captured on video and widely shared on YouTube, that fueled concerns about Biden's cognitive decline before he ever took office.
Tapper's interviews, so far, have conveniently sidestepped the question of whether this cover-up started before the election. For example, in 2020, just prior to the election, Lara Trump raised Biden's cognitive issues on Tapper's show. Tapper responded by dismissing her assertion, and scolded her for making children who stutter feel bad.
The media knew Biden's mental decline was an issue in 2019. By 2020, it was impossible to ignore. But fearing a Bernie Sanders upset in the primary, Democrats and their media allies closed ranks.
Tapper's post-facto outrage avoids this context — and his own complicity. Journalism isn't stenography. Blaming sources for lying ignores the journalist's job: to interrogate power, not merely repeat it. The public deserves better than a press that performs truth only when it's convenient.
Now, with Trump back in office, journalists claim they'll be watchdogs again. But the public isn't buying it — not after watching the media abandon objectivity when it mattered most. Credibility, once lost, isn't easily reclaimed. And the damage isn't just to journalism, it's to democracy itself.
Nolan Higdon is a founding member of the Critical Media Literacy Conference of the Americas, Project Censored National Judge and university lecturer at Merrill College and the Education Department at University of California, Santa Cruz. All of his work is available at Substack. He is the author of 'The Anatomy of Fake News: A Critical News Literacy Education,' 'Let's Agree to Disagree: A Critical Thinking Guide to Communication, Conflict Management, and Critical Media Literacy' and 'The Media And Me: A Guide To Critical Media Literacy For Young People.' Higdon is a regular source of expertise for CBS, NBC, The New York Times and The San Francisco Chronicle.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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