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After feasting on four years of Trump chaos inside the White House where leaks, gossip and scandal were the norm, Beltway journalists are losing patience with President Joe Biden’s brand of efficient and professional governing. The frustration is now spilling out into the open.
This week, the New York Times mocked Biden’s speech-giving skills, calling him “boring” and unable to inspire. The article’s sub-headline read, “Even the president labeled a speech boring recently, an admission that highlights a tendency toward delivering minutiae-filled discourse over scaling oratorical heights.”
The Times specifically acknowledged that while Biden’s speeches are often drowning in detail and substance, they’re not satisfying (to journalists) because there’s no music behind them. They’re not entertaining.
From the Times:
• “What can seem like high-stakes drama to those inside the Washington Beltway often feels like the stuff of PBS documentaries to the rest of the country.”
• “The details in Mr. Biden’s speeches often trip him up as well, leading to mumbles, stumbles, pauses and real-time corrections as he struggles through the dense material on the teleprompter.”
• “Mr. Biden has a long history of being long-winded.”
This is theater criticism masquerading as journalism. It’s a complete waste of time, yet journalists love to indulge in it when there’s a Democrat in the White House.
The Times thinks Democrats are nerds, claiming Biden’s excessive substance continues a party tradition: “Presidents Barack Obama once delivered a 17-minute answer to a health care question, and Bill Clinton, who was forced to apologize to a late night comic for a dreadful convention speech.”
Six months after a moronic president left the White House, one who had trouble stitching together two coherent and truthful sentences, and on the same day Trump insisted the deadly January 6 insurrection was actually a “lovefest,” the Times went deep on the idea that Biden, Obama and Clinton aren’t good communicators. The newspaper used an 11-year-old health care answer Obama once gave, and a 33-year-old convention speech Clinton gave, to makes its point. (As for substance, under the Democratic presidents of Biden, Obama, and Clinton, America has created 37 million new jobs, and counting.)
Meanwhile, look at what the print headline was for that Times piece: "Lost in Rhetorical Weeds, Biden Struggles to Inspire." Omitted from the article was the fact that he enjoys a 95% approval rating among Democrats. Biden last year accumulated more votes than any presidential candidate in American history, but the Times isn’t sure he can “inspire.”
More proof of the media’s contempt for Biden, and their resentment for his No Drama approach, was found in a recent newsletter by D.C. journalist Julia Ioffe, who explored how journalists are reacting to the new Democratic administration, in the wake of the Trump media circus.
“People you’ve likely read or heard of or watched were concerned about what a Trump loss would mean for their career. That was the talk of the town,” she wrote.
The man who launched an unprecedented crusade to overthrow a verified American election was leaving office, and a key topic of discussion among journalists was how that would that affect their careers (“Would anyone buy Trump books anymore?”), and by extension, would “boring” Joe Biden be bad for business?
Talk about the Navel Gazing Olympics.
With a professional, gossip-free Democrat in the White House, journalists are lashing out. “They know how to push back and fight over headlines and parcel out dumb pre-approved scoops to people who will write about it the way they want,” one Beltway media insider said of the Biden White House, oblivious to the fact that the press typed up dumb Trump White House stories for four years, without complaint. Remember the spoon-fed media narrative that Trump was “distracted” and that’s why he ignored the Covid pandemic as it eviscerated the American economy and killed thousands in the spring of 2020?
Journalists are quietly seething at the Biden White House. “Kudos to them, they’re very happy with themselves” one anonymous journalist told Ioffe. “You can see it, the coverage across the board from everyone is very, very lame. You never get inside the room and hear how this shit’s going down. Like, how are they managing this elderly man?”
Added another, “There’s a sense that Biden’s position is fragile and that he has to be protected, that any unkind gaze might knock him over—which plays into every right-wing stereotype.”
And a third: “I don’t know that there’s been a president who’s been so protected and wrapped in so many layers of wool to keep him away from anything remotely approaching an adversarial interview.” Another journalist belittled Biden as “an old man watching his dog.”
Oh, how they miss the Orange One.
“I loved covering Trump,” one prominent White House reporter said. “It was a great and fascinating story. It wasn’t just about him; it was about his movement and the institutions and America. The story was always so dramatic and had these larger than life characters. The stakes often felt very high. I like covering Biden, too, but it just doesn’t feel as dramatic.”
The media nostalgia is tangible, almost wistful. But never forget that Trump ripped families apart at the border. He colluded with a foreign power while in office. Got impeached twice. Called neo-Nazis “very fine people.” Made a public health emergency worse every day he was in office. Accused Obama of spying on his campaign. Shut down the government for one month because Congress wouldn’t fund his border wall to nowhere. He spent months denigrating the integrity of American elections.
Today, reporters can’t disguise their disdain for Biden, while missing Trump because he was “dramatic.” What an unflattering portrait journalists paint of themselves.
(Photo: Brandan Smialowski/Getty Images)
📺 GOOD STUFF:
Breaking 17 years of silence, Andrea Mackris details the sexual assault lawsuit she filed against Bill O’Reilly, and the $9 million settlement she signed, complete with a draconian gag order, which she’s now ignoring.
From The Daily Beast scoop:
Mackris, who was forced to give up her Fox News job as part of her lawsuit’s resolution, has lived a life mostly of quiet desperation, in which the settlement check has surely provided financial security and a degree of solace, but in the end hasn’t eased her struggle to obtain work in a profession she loved.
“I should have never lost that [Fox News] job,” Mackris said. “It’s not up to me. It’s not about reinventing myself or finding a second career path after all I ever wanted to do was this… I had a job I had wanted, that I had worked really hard for, that I had earned, that I was great at and loved.”
🚘 FUN STUFF — BECAUSE WE ALL NEED A BREAK
Mike Cooley, Patterson Hood & Jason Isbell, “Carl Perkins’ Cadillac (Live)”
Nearly seven years ago, Isbell reunited onstage with former Drive-By Truckers bandmates Hood and Cooley for a special night of Southern music at the storied Shoals Theatre in Florence, Alabama. Just now released to the public, the live album is a testament to the DBT, one of the great American rock bands of the last 25 years.
In “Carl Perkins’ Cadillac,” they mine the rich heritage of Perkins, Elvis, Johnny Cash, Sam Phillips, and Sun Records, and do it with novel-like character details.
Mr. Phillips never blew enough hot air
To need a little gold plated paperweight
He promised him a Cadillac and put the wind in Carl's face
He did just what he said he was gonna do and the money came in sacks
New contracts and Carl Perkins' Cadillac
🎙 Click here to listen to the music that’s been featured on PRESS RUN, via a Spotify playlist.
Click hereto listen via Apple Music.
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