If President Trump called the Mona Lisa an ugly piece of fake art, the media would spend 48 hours saying he “falsely claimed a famous painting was bad.” But former Vice President Joe Biden says some of the most ridiculous things, and TV journalists do little more than thoughtfully nod along.
He did it over and over at the final presidential debate Thursday, and cable news anchors either shrugged or repeated it as if the asinine things he said were perfectly reasonable.
Let’s just take three.
1. “You have 525 kids not knowing where in God’s name they’re going to be and lost their parents.” This was during the immigration portion of the debate, in reference to a report that hundreds of illegal immigrant children have not been reunited with the adults who brought them across the border. (This, by the way, happens for a number of reasons, including that the parents had criminal records or weren’t the actual parents.) But as Trump repeatedly said, family separations predate his administration. It happened under the previous two presidents, including in the Obama administration.
Biden somehow gets away with pretending otherwise. The next day on CNN, senior Trump campaign aide Tim Murtaugh noted that the Obama administration placed illegal immigrant children in detention center cages, only to have anchor John Berman insist that it didn’t happen as frequently as it has happened under Trump.
“The cages, as you call them, some of them existed during the Obama administration,” said Berman, as if “cages” isn’t how they had been described by Democrats until now. “The policy of separation, as a mass policy, categorically began during the Trump administration as a choice.”
So, is it a matter of quantity? If so, how many illegal immigrant children in cages would be acceptable at any given time? No, no questions like that for Biden. Only repetition of whatever lines he spews out.
2. “Take a look what New York has done in terms of turning the curve down, in terms of the number of people dying. … And look at the states that are having such a spike in the coronavirus. They’re the red states.” True, the top 10 states where infections are currently increasing are red. Yet New York remains the runaway star in total COVID-19-related deaths, with more than 33,000. That’s just shy of what California and Texas, the next two states, have combined.
It’s nice to see that New York finally has a handle on things after coasting down a runway of 33,000 corpses, but even that isn’t saying much. Hospitalizations are up nearly 40% over the last 14 days, according to the New York Times. Did no TV anchor want to provide that context? Nah!
3. “Make sure it’s totally transparent. Have the scientific world see, know, look at it, go through all the processes.” That was Biden on how he would encourage people to get vaccinated for the coronavirus, once that’s an option. Of course, Biden and his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, have done nothing but sow doubt about the safety of a vaccine, so long as Trump is president. So now, when questioned about it, they backpedal and say they’re fine with any medicine so long as scientists give their seal of approval.
When Murtaugh pointed that out Friday, Berman piped up, telling Murtaugh that Biden “made clear that he will take the vaccine if the scientists say it’s safe to do so.”
Well, duh. A vaccine can’t make it to market without scientists clearing it. This isn’t like a medicine for the gravely ill. Far too many healthy people will be taking a vaccine to allow any risks. That’s what the Food and Drug Administration exists for. How do Biden and Harris get away with saying things like, “I will not take his word for it,” in reference to a vaccine and then get the media to parrot it with enthusiasm? That’s another question we’re not supposed to ask.
