President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance gave way to weeks of absurd stories and mass confusion regarding the country’s future. The past few weeks have seriously threatened the nation at a time of broad division and distrust.
The public’s trust in the media fell in October of last year to a near-all-time low, according to polling data from Gallup. Only 32% of respondents reported having “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of confidence that the media report the news accurately and fairly.
A record-high 39% of participants said they don’t trust the media at all. Tangential to this distrust of the media is a pessimistic perspective regarding the government. A survey conducted by the Partnership for Public Service this spring found that only 23% of people trust the federal government and only 15% believe it to be transparent. The past few weeks have exacerbated these trends.
It all started with the debate. Or, rather, it started when the White House and the liberal media deceived the public by claiming Biden was not in mental decline and was still fit for the job. The clips of him at the G7 summit were “cheap fakes,” apparently. The narrative months earlier was that his verbal miscues were due to his stutter.
What we saw at the debate was a disaster for Democrats, surely, but it was more importantly a shock to the public. Many of us were conscious of Biden’s mental deterioration and weren’t particularly surprised by his dismal performance, but the night’s events were genuinely surprising to those who hadn’t paid attention earlier. We saw a disconnect between what the media was willing to show and what Biden was actually like.
It is not the public’s fault. When theoretically prestigious media outlets and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre push a narrative on the public, it’s rational that a lot of people would give them the benefit of the doubt and believe their lies.
The disastrous debate was just the start, however. There have been many more chapters in this story separating the media and the public since then that have only made things worse.
Trying to right his ship, Biden conducted interviews over the next few weeks with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, and NBC’s Lester Holt. His confrontational nature and verbal miscues during these interviews further called into question the media’s journalistic integrity.
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Then, former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt and Biden dropped out of the race the following weekend after contracting COVID-19. You can’t make this stuff up.
The liberal media and the White House laid the foundation for the craziness of these past few weeks. The mass skepticism that the public already has toward our nation’s journalists and government officials will inevitably worsen due to this chain of events.