NBC’s Meet the Depressed attempted the impossible: discussing President Joe Biden’s mental decline without mentioning the media’s role in trying to hide what the American people saw with their very own eyes. It goes without saying that this effort failed miserably.
The gaslighting began during host Kristen Welker’s interview of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). Click “expand” to view transcript:
NBC's Kristen Welker tries to ask Chick Schumer whether he and top Dems misled Americans about Biden's cognitive decline, as though the media didn't have a role in that conspiracy to defraud. pic.twitter.com/0Gfi4l6zp0
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) January 5, 2025
NBC MEET THE PRESS
1/5/25
10:29 AM
KRISTEN WELKER: Obviously, there has been a lot of focus on President Biden's role in this. You were, obviously, in close contact with President Biden well before the public tuned into that debate that ultimately led to him stepping down. I want to play you a little bit of something you said last year. Take a look.
CHUCK SCHUMER: I talked to President Biden, you know, regularly. Oft- sometimes several times in a week or usually several times in a week. His mental acuity is great. It's fine. It's as good as it's been over the years… (VIDEO SWIPE) all this right-wing propaganda that his mental acuity has declined is wrong.
WELKER: Leader Schumer, what do you say to Americans that feel as though you and other top Democrats misled them about President Biden's mental acuity?
SCHUMER: Look, we didn't. And let's look at President Biden. He's had an amazing record. The legislation we passed, one of the most significant groups of legislation since The New De- since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, putting in 235 judges- a record, and he's a patriot. He's a great guy. And when he stepped down he did it on his own because he thought it was better not only for the Democratic Party- for America, we should all salute him. We should all salute him.
WELKER: Do you feel, as we have this conversation today, that President Biden could serve another four years had he stayed in the race and potentially won?
SCHUMER: Well, I'm not going to speculate. As I said, I think his record is a stellar one and he’ll go down in history as a really outstanding president.
The tell here with Welker is that she did not interrupt Schumer as he proceeded to respond to her question on Biden’s mental decline and Schumer’s own furtherance of the phony “sharp as a tack” narrative. Schumer was allowed to deflect and kill time undisturbed. No “to put a fine point on it” or “but that’s not what I asked”, as is her modus operandi with Republicans.
More importantly, Schumer was confronted only with his own statement. Welker did not bring up the devastating Wall Street Journal exposé (which specifically mentions Schumer’s visit with Biden in Delaware ahead of his dropping out of the presidential race) that confirms what we all suspected when it comes to Biden’s decline- that his fast fade was deliberately hidden from the American public. Welker offered no followup and moved to her next question.
The subsequent panel addressed Schumer’s remarks. Of note, former Biden campaign spokesperson and MSNBC host Symone Sanders-Townsend was allowed to run out the clock by quadrupling down on “sharp as a tack”, and running Trump whataboutism (click “expand” to view transcript):
MSNBC host @SymoneDSanders is over here shilling for Biden's mental acuity with the tenacity of that one Japanese soldier in the jungles of Lubang Island, still fighting long after the war ended pic.twitter.com/pNq5fsjQL8
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) January 5, 2025
NBC MEET THE PRESS
1/5/25
10:54 AM
KRISTEN WELKER: Let's talk about the Democrats. I thought the conversation with Leader Schumer was fascinating. I asked him if he thought President Biden could serve another four years. He kind of pivoted, didn't answer that directly. There’s obviously a lot of soul-searching going on right now in the Democratic Party. What did you make of what we heard from Leader Schumer?
SYMONE SANDERS TOWNSEND: Well, I was very surprised that when you asked the question about mental acuity he didn't more forcefully push back. The question on the table is: is the president all the way there? And the answer is unequivocally yes. Now people can say that you feel as though President Biden might be a little too old to do the job, but he is doing the job and his mental acuity is there. So I think that there is a conflation of two things here. It's his mental capacity and serving another four years as old as he is. But those are two separate things in my opinion, and look- these people that have known Joe Biden their entire political lives. I know Joe Biden is like, can y’all just please defend me a lil’ more?
WELKER: Well…
JONATHAN MARTIN: Well, it’s not worth defending him, though, because at every turn the last year and a half he has taken the path of the most indulgent turn for himself rather than the good for the party: by running again, by pardoning his son and now, frankly, by some of these choices for the (Presidential) Medal of Freedom and going to Rome for one last trip. He's not exiting in a way that I think reflects well on his party and Democrats are deeply, deeply unhappy about it, and they should be, frankly.
MARC SHORT: It hurt Democrats- it hurt Democrats in November to try to tell the American people something they could see with their own eyes wasn’t true.
WELKER: Hmmmmmm.
SANDERS TOWNSEND: But It's not true that the president doesn't have the mental acuity. You can say…
SHORT: Of course it is, Symone. The American people saw it for themselves in the debate.
SANDERS TOWNSEND: What are you saying? He can at least put a sentence together.
SHORT: Are you sure?
SANDERS TOWNSEND: The president-elect is the one I am concerned about, yes., because I recently spoke to the president. But let me say- let me just say this thing about the Democrats and with friends like these, OK, the Democratic friends that Joe Biden has had, I do think that he understands the nature of where things are going which is why he pardoned his son. Because the president-elect has been very clear about his ire and what he wants to do to his son. So, after everything Joe Biden has done, do you really expect him to go out on the high note for his last surviving son because Chuck Schumer would like it to be so?
Again, Welker allowed Sanders-Townsend to run out the clock on the segment without substantively addressing Schumer’s evasion of her question on Biden's mental acuity. This proves that the media are not really interested in examining the greatest political fraud perpetrated upon the American people, treating it instead as an inconvenient speed bump on the way to the next Resistance cycle.
Exit question: which of Biden’s Medal of Freedom awardees did J-Mart find objectionable?