There was never a doubt that the absolute hysteria of the national press would go away the minute President Biden was sworn into office, but good God, was Inauguration Day humiliating for Washington journalists.
Or rather, it should be humiliating, but they have no shame and don’t care that half the country finds them cringeworthy and pathetic.
The glee expressed all day by reporters and talking heads who were relieved to have a Democrat back in office was irrepressible. And not just any Democrat, but Biden, a Democrat who loves Washington and government ritual as much as they do.
Each hour of CNN’s programming was a back-to-back tribute to Biden for the promise that he would turn the clock back and make Washington what it once was — a stage for overpaid dignitaries, bureaucrats, and, most of all, journalists to tell the rest of the country over and over again about how important and serious they are.
Gone were the hostilities experienced during the Trump administration. Liberal reporters had only sweetness and light in their hearts for Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Brianna Keilar, the “chief Washington correspondent” of CNN, shouted out at Biden during the inauguration parade, “Can you unite the country, Mr. President?”
Just thereafter, her colleague Jim Sciutto called out to Biden the exact same question. Minutes later, he yelled at Harris, “What’s your first job?” before he chuckled and told viewers that Biden and Harris “are hitting the ground running.”
During the White House press briefing, the first of the new administration, an Associated Press reporter asked press secretary Jen Psaki if she viewed her role as a matter of advancing the president’s interest or giving accurate information to the public. “When you are up there,” the reporter said, “do you see your primary role as promoting interests of the president, or are you there to provide us the unvarnished truth so that we can share that with the American people?”
Contrast that with Kayleigh McEnany’s first day as press secretary during the Trump administration last year, when a reporter asked her to “pledge to us that you will never lie to us from that podium.”
Wow, what a difference a party in power makes when it comes to the media’s mood.
Mind you, Biden, on his first day in office, had signed a wave of executive actions that reversed or signaled his intent to reverse much of Donald Trump’s legacy. There may have been one question about that, but if you yawned, you would have missed it. There is right now a migrant caravan of roughly 8,000 Central Americans heading toward the U.S. border. Part of Biden’s executive actions was to relax restrictive measures Trump put on immigration. No one asked Psaki if that would be for the good of the country at any point in our history, let alone during a pandemic.
None of this is to complain. We should all be happy to see just how distant from their mission journalists have come. Their purpose isn’t disseminating information, and it hasn’t been for a long time. Their purpose in the Biden years is to continue their moral crusade, and that means expressing their overt approval for Biden and his administration so long they keep Washington the way they believe it should be.
