Washington Week with The Atlantic host (and Atlantic editor) Jeffrey Goldberg devoted a full episode of his latest show, normally a political panel, solely to interviewing journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson about their book Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.
NewsBusters has already covered Goldberg’s insulting arrogance, as if “media critics don't understand ‘how reporting works’ when journalists cooperated with Biden in denying what was obvious to a large majority of Americans -- that Biden wasn't fit to be president.”
Tapper also brought up a couple of names of people who brought Biden’s decline to national attention in 2024, including former Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who tried to challenge Biden in Democratic primaries, calling attention to Biden’s age and decline, and special counsel Robert Hur, who had famously described Biden in his special counsel report on the former president's handling of classified documents as a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."
After Tapper asked rhetorically, “Where are the incentive structures for people in our politics to raise their hand and say, the emperor has no clothes?” Goldberg himself brought up Rep. Phillips’ challenge.
Goldberg: “There was one congressman, one congressman….”
Tapper: Dean Phillips, who ran against Joe Biden, and was defenestrated. And, you know, who knows what he's going to do next. He's out of Congress. He was utterly destroyed and humiliated. Robert Hur, the special counsel, tried to tell the truth about what he saw behind the scenes. We've now all heard the Hur tapes and, oh my God, that's the same Joe Biden that was at the debate.
But travel back to 2024, and we find that Goldberg himself bashed both Rep. Phillips and special counsel Robert Hur. On the February 9, 2024 edition, Goldberg had an exchange with roundtable guest and fellow PBS personality Amna Nawaz, co-anchor of the News Hour.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Amna, let me ask about the prosecutor here, the investigation, Mr. Hur. Was he out of bounds in describing in very colloquial terms how he viewed Biden`s age and memory?
Nawaz agreed with Goldberg somewhat, while admitting Biden's age was a valid concern among voters.
Goldberg seemed eager to tamp down the age controversy while chiding Hur, asking former New York Times editor James Bennett, “is this a redux of Hillary and her emails?”
Bennett also agreed that Hur had gone too far.
BENNETT: But I found some of the language in the report a little bit gratuitous. I mean, it seemed to me to go unnecessarily far and a little bit that they were trying to smuggle some of the details in. If you look at specific details, like saying, was I still vice president in 2013, you could get confused about, technically, did my vice presidency end in 2012 or 2013? You could read that a couple of different ways.
Not done, Goldberg solicited similar comments from Politico's Josh Gerstein, asking, "was this out of bounds?" Gerstein also agreed, in a convoluted fashion, accusing Hur of performing "a degree of sleight of hand" before agreeing with Goldberg that the descriptive phrases by Hur were irresponsible.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: That was almost written for the tweet.
JOSH GERSTEIN: It really seemed like something that was being thrown in there….
As also noted above, Tapper also mentionedPhillips sympathetically as someone “utterly destroyed and humiliated,” presumably by Biden staffers, for challenging Biden’s nomination.
So how did Goldberg and his Washington Week panel treat Phillips during that fateful 2024 primary season? On the March 29, 2024 edition, Atlantic staff writer Mark Leibovich and Goldberg had this sarcastic exchange.
MARK LEIBOVICH: ….let`s be honest, I mean, Biden has performed quite well in the primaries. And the Democratic primaries, if you look at the numeric difference, there was some talk that Dean Phillips was going to get 25, 30 percent of the vote, you know, he was in --
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: You remember Dean Phillips? [Laughter]
LEIBOVICH: I do, right.
GOLDBERG: Wow.
LEIBOVICH: I mean, yes, he did get out, right?
GOLDBERG: I had no idea.
NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN: He did drop out, I think, right?
LEIBOVICH: And he did drop out.
