As the legacy media continue to demonstrate, their role in helping to cover President Joe Biden’s physical, mental and cognitive decline from the American public is a decidedly uncomfortable matter. Case in point: CBS and ABC omitting from their newscasts that Biden’s doctor, when asked about that very real and evident decline, took the Fifth before the House Oversight Committee.
Watch the sole report on Dr. Kevin O’Connor’s testimony before House Oversight, as aired on NBC Nightly News on Wednesday, July 9th, 2025 (click “expand” to view full transcript):
TOM LLAMAS: Now to the fireworks on Capitol Hill with former President Biden's doctor subpoenaed by Republicans, declining to answer questions about Biden's health while he was in office, citing his Fifth Amendment rights. Here’s Kelly O'Donnell.
KELLY O’DONNELL: Today, the type of housecall that a former White House physician did not want to make. Dr. Kevin O'Connor, who treated former President Biden for at least 16 years, asserted his Fifth Amendment today and declined to give testimony after he was subpoenaed by House Republicans investigating Mr. Biden's medical and mental fitness while in office.
JAKE GREENBERG: Dr. O’Connor, were you ever told to lie about the president's health?
KEVIN O’CONNOR: On the advice of counsel I must respectfully decline to answer based upon physician-patient privilege and in reliance on my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.
JAMES COMER: This is unprecedented. And I think that this adds more fuel to the fire that there was a cover up.
O’DONNELL: But a lawyer for O’Connor insists the doctor could not testify without risking his medical license, writing: “Dr. O’Connor will not violate his oath of confidentiality for any of his patients, including President Biden.” The 82-year-old former president is now being treated for an aggressive prostate cancer.
JOE BIDEN: I feel good!
O’DONNELL: Recent books allege episodes of mental decline while he was president, like not recalling the names of long time aides. The former president has disputed that. Democrat Jasmine Crockett defended Biden’s mental fitness.
JASMINE CROCKETT: I did have an opportunity to interact with the president. I never had a concern.
O’DONNELL: Dr. O'Connor is among several close Biden aides being called to testify as Republicans question whether Biden was in command during his presidency. Tom.
LLAMAS: All right, Kelly O’Donnell. Kelly, thank you.
The report, of course, is not flawless. Kelly O’Donnell helpfully reinforces patient confidentiality as a reason for which Dr. O’Connor took the Fifth. However, there remain many open questions over O’Connor’s role (or lack thereof) in the conspiracy to hide Biden’s obvious and painful decline from the American public. There was Jasmine Crockett coming out and shilling for Biden’s mental acuity at this late hour, and O’Donnell ended her report with what sounded like a veiled “Republicans Pounce”.
There wasn’t much extra time to allocate to begin with, because the networks ran another full day of Texas Flood coverage at the top of the newscasts. Although with the legacies failing to pin the story on perceived Trump malevolence (NWS, FEMA) and having to settle for local incompetence (Kern County talking flood alarms for 20 years), one expects that the story will recede from national focus.
Nonetheless, the autopen investigations are a major story that should’ve made it into everyone’s roundup- or, at minimum, a brief. ABC allocated that time to local crime: specifically, the California mom that left her babies to die in a hot car while she got lip filler. CBS focused that time on the end of the Philly city workers’ strike.
This particular omission reminds me of something I learned in freshman art class many years ago: the empty spaces are as important as those that are covered, if not more so. Leaving Biden’s doctor taking the Fifth in front of House Oversight is a major empty space.
