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Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Biden book authors pressed on why the media failed in covering cognitive decline scandal
CHICAGO – The journalists behind the bombshell book about Joe Biden's cognitive decline continue to face tough questions about the media's failure to report on it sooner. Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, the co-authors of "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again," appeared in Chicago as part of their book tour and were confronted with an audience question submitted by Fox News Digital about the reckoning the media has been facing in recent weeks and months regarding their role in the Biden scandal. "I mean, it was a failing of the press," Thompson responded Thursday. "'I'd say, on the most basic level, if the press was completely on this story, then the debate would not have been such a shock." Biden Book Author Reveals How White House Staff Truly Felt About Karine Jean-pierre As Press Secretary The Axios reporter insisted newsrooms aren't a "monolith" and dismissed the notion that there was any coordination between news outlets in covering up for Biden, jokingly telling the Windy City crowd "they can't even plan a happy hour." "There are a lot of really great reporters and there are a lot of great reporters in the Biden White House," Thompson said. "And it does frustrate me a bit when there's this broad brush painted by, in my opinion, some bad-faith right-wing people trying to be like, 'They were all in the tank.' That being said, I do think there were a few things going on that allowed some reporters to miss this. One is, I do think some people let their own personal ideological leanings affect how they reported." Read On The Fox News App "The other thing I will say about the D.C. sort of circuit beyond reporters – D.C. is a liberal town. It didn't always use to be, but it is now. And if you are an aggressive, tough, fair reporter on Donald Trump, you get snaps all around town. If you are invited to every single garden party… You don't get as many yes snaps when you're covering Obama or when you're covering Biden," he continued, adding that the "social incentives" change between covering the Trump administration and covering the Biden administration. Cnn's Tapper Rips Media Smear Campaign Against Hur, Wsj On Biden Decline Without Mentioning Own Network "It's a complicated question," Tapper chimed in. "Yes. I wish I had been more aggressive about it, but I will say when we started writing this book after Election Day 2024, we did not know what we were gonna get or how many people were gonna talk to us… We talked to more than 200 people. And we were surprised at what we learned. Like we did not know that some of this dated back to 2015 after the tragic loss of his son Beau." "And so the idea is that this was all just sitting there waiting for the reporting, I wish it was so, it is not true," Tapper said. While the CNN anchor conceded that "right-wing media" was right in calling out Biden's cognitive decline before the rest of the legacy media, he swiped that sharing viral videos of Biden over the years isn't "investigative journalism." "If any of those outlets actually published any investigative journalism that had cabinet secretaries as we do, or senior White House staffers as we do, etc., saying these things as opposed to just pointing and laughing at him, then maybe I would be more receptive to the argument from them, 'Oh, we all knew this as we reported it at the time,'" Tapper said. Shielding Biden: Journalists Shed Light On The Media's Cover-up Of A Weakened President When asked what their takeaways from their reporting and the entire Biden saga were, Thompson called out journalists who rely on a "moral calculus" when determining whether to cover a major political story. "If reporters are doing a moral calculus, or they start doing some weird calculus where 'If I report this, would it help Trump and that's gonna be bad or good,' that is an endless path that I don't think reporters should be trying to do," Thompson said. "The job and the reporting is, is this true? Can we report it? And it's really up to the country to decide what to do with that reporting. I think sometimes reporters get caught up in thinking about the externalities and the consequences of putting this out into the world." "There are always going to be bad-faith people and bad-faith politicians that are gonna take the reporting and skew it and use it for their own partisan purposes. But if you start thinking that way in saying like, 'Oh, I don't want to report something that's true because bad-faith people are gonna take advantage of it,' I think you just end up in this, like, bad cul-de-sac," he article source: Biden book authors pressed on why the media failed in covering cognitive decline scandal
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Team Trump's new ‘patriotism' tests for federal job-seekers shouldn't fly under the radar
About a month after Election Day 2024, it became clear that Donald Trump's team had embraced a problematic approach to new employee screenings. The New York Times, for example, reportedly spoke to several people involved in the hiring process for high-ranking positions who were asked whether they believed the 2020 election was stolen. The Wall Street Journal reported soon after that the Republican operation was imposing 'loyalty tests' on job applicants, even asking candidates about their views on NATO and tariffs for jobs that had nothing to do with international affairs or economic policymaking. Two weeks after Inauguration Day, The Washington Post reported on similar tests being applied to candidates for top national security positions, including questions about whether the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was secretly 'an inside job.' Against this backdrop Politico reported this week: As President Donald Trump moves to slash the size of the federal workforce, his administration unveiled a plan to ensure that any new hires are 'patriotic Americans' who vow to advance the president's policy priorities. The White House and the agency that serves as the government's human resources arm Thursday released directives for departments to use when recruiting employees in a memo that represents a dramatic shift in federal hiring procedures. At first blush, a story like this might seem dry and bureaucratic. The Office of Personnel Management last week issued a memo outlining the administration's detailed 'merit hiring plan,' and I can appreciate why this could come across as boring. It's not. Under the new policy, everyone seeking a job at the GS-5 pay-grade or above — a group that would include everyone from firefighters to food inspectors to air traffic controllers — will have to submit four essays as part of the application process. The essays are supposed to provide answers to specific questions: 'How has your commitment to the Constitution and the founding principles of the United States inspired you to pursue this role within the Federal government? Provide a concrete example from professional, academic, or personal experience.' 'In this role, how would you use your skills and experience to improve government efficiency and effectiveness? Provide specific examples where you improved processes, reduced costs, or improved outcomes.' 'How would you help advance the President's Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant Executive Orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.' 'How has a strong work ethic contributed to your professional, academic or personal achievements? Provide one or two specific examples, and explain how those qualities would enable you to serve effectively in this position.' Imagine people who are applying to be rangers at a national park being asked to write essays about how they'd 'advance' Trump's executive orders. Then imagine the president himself trying to write an essay about his 'commitment to the Constitution' — a document he's talked about 'terminating' in response to one of his election conspiracy theories. The goal, according to the memo, is to recruit 'patriotic Americans' with a 'commitment to American ideals,' which also sets a bar that the incumbent president would likely struggle to clear. In an opinion piece for The New York Times, Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley, and Catherine Fisk, a professor of labor law at the same school, explained, 'The government can and should ensure that federal employees, from administrative assistants to air traffic controllers, have the skills and aptitude to do their jobs. But their views on the administration's policy priorities are irrelevant, as is their patriotism — however that is defined. Allowing someone in the government to screen applicants for patriotism is reminiscent of the loyalty oaths of the McCarthy era, which were arbitrarily applied to unfairly deny employment to many.' Chemerinsky and Fisk added, 'No modern presidential administration has undertaken such an effort to staff the entire government with political loyalists. It is plainly inconsistent with good government, with federal law and with the Constitution.' There was a time in the recent past that 'patriotism tests' for federal employees would've generated a significant controversy and an intense backlash. But in 2025, against a backdrop of countless other White House outrages, the OPM memo doesn't appear to have made much of a splash. This article was originally published on
