Lying is certainly nothing new in politics. It is said that prostitution is the world's oldest profession, but politics is assuredly the dirtiest — filthier even than garbageman, mortician or, well, the world's oldest profession itself.
Former President Bill Clinton (while we're on the topic of sexual promiscuity) perjured himself, leading to his impeachment. Former President Barack Obama, in what PolitiFact called its 2013 "Lie of the Year," promised that "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it." And on and on it goes.
The corporate media, whose 21st-century raison d'etre is propping up the Regime Party (Democrats) and punishing the Deplorable Party (Republicans), often joins the fray. The Russia-collusion delusion disinformation operation was laundered by Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign to seedy "intelligence" firm Fusion GPS and law firm Perkins Coie LLP. For years, the corporate media then dutifully pushed the false narrative. Indeed, it is unclear to this day whether MSNBC has ever read the Mueller report.
But after last Thursday's CNN presidential debate in Atlanta, in which President Joe Biden delivered a catastrophic performance for the ages, there is only one conclusion: The yearslong effort by Biden administration flunkies, Democratic Party poohbahs and pro-Regime media stenographers to forcefully deny Biden's obvious physical and mental decline will go down as the single greatest lie in American history.
And what an assiduous effort it was. For years, Democrats and the corporate media lied through their teeth about the blatant decline of the president's physical and mental faculties.
When Biden fell off a stationary bicycle in 2022, handlers brushed it off as no big deal. When Biden started wearing funny-looking tennis sneakers instead of dress shoes, presumably in order to stabilize his gait and prevent debilitating falls, aides informed us that Biden was just embracing a certain sartorial savviness.
When former Special Counsel Robert Hur declined to pursue charges against Biden due to the fact he "would likely present himself to a jury... as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory," media apparatchiks denounced Hur as a "Trump plant" in the Justice Department. (Where is Hur's apology?)
After multiple videos emerged of Biden freezing, staring and wandering off, The New York Times called them "misleading"; the Biden White House dismissed them as "cheap fakes." The Wall Street Journal's recent story in which reporters interviewed 45 officials who expressed concern about Biden's senescence was excoriated as a "hit job."
All along the way, costly "gaffes" — such as Biden inadvertently calling for regime change in Moscow during a March 2022 visit to Warsaw — were simply chalked up to Uncle Joe being Uncle Joe. How dare you question hardscrabble Joe from Scranton: nothing to see here!
Anything — anything — to prevent the American people from learning the truth. Axios reported last Friday how "close aides have carefully shielded (Biden) from people inside and outside the White House since the beginning of his presidency." For Democrats and their media enablers, there can be no stone left unturned to protect their precious. The ends always justify the means, after all, just as Saul Alinsky taught.
The media's hubris in thinking it could get away with this is astounding. Biden is the president of the United States. His decline wasn't exactly a state secret, at least for anyone with functioning eyes and ears. This column two years ago , in lamenting Biden's "indications of a palpable senility," concluded that "[t]here is something very, very clearly wrong with the president of the United States."
Really, just how stupid do Democrats and the corporate media think we are? How long did they think they could get away with this gaslighting operation?
A Gallup poll last October revealed that 32% of Americans trust the corporate media either "a great deal" or "a fair amount." That seems far too high. These hacks deserve nothing but disgust and contempt.
Nor has the persistent media gaslighting for the past two to three years been a victimless crime. The collective victim is us: all of us. America is wildly insecure under the "leadership" of Biden. Xi Jinping is sure to move on Taiwan before year's end. Who knows what Xi's friends, from Pyongyang to Moscow to Tehran, might do. Who will stop them, after all?
The ultimate irony of it all? The massive lie and disinformation operation to obfuscate the president's decline has been perpetrated in the name of — you guessed it — "our democracy." The chutzpah!
"Democracy Dies in Darkness," reads The Washington Post's masthead slogan, conveniently adopted mere weeks after former President Donald Trump took office in 2017. Come again? We don't actually know who is running the country right now. It certainly isn't Uncle Joe. Now that is some serious "darkness."
Never forgive, and never forget, what these lying miscreants have done to us — and to the republic.
Josh Hammer is the Senior Editor-at-Large of Newsweek, and is host of "The Josh Hammer Show" podcast. He also authors the weekly newsletter, "The Josh Hammer Report." Josh is also a syndicated columnist through Creators Syndicate, a research fellow at the Edmund Burke Foundation, and a popular campus speaker. Read Josh Hammer's Reports — Here.