Before Joe Biden’s stumbling and incoherent debate performance led panicked journalists to join Democrats in bullying the presumptive Democratic nominee out of the 2024 campaign, the media airwaves were full of praise for Biden’s “enormously consequential” and “extraordinarily successful” presidency.
The “successes” that so impressed journalists, of course, were the *multiple* trillion-dollar-plus legislative packages passed by a friendly Democratic Congress during Biden’s first two years — “accomplishments” that have stoked the awful inflation that’s led most Americans to say the President’s economic policies have failed.
“If you add up those seven pieces of legislation, it’s a $3.5 trillion agenda that Biden and the Democrats have passed since early last year,” political analyst Ryan Lizza gushed on CNN in 2022. “There’s really nothing like that in terms of that scale....He’s sort of in that modern pantheon now.”
And in January, MSNBC’s Alex Wagner similarly cited some of Biden’s destructive left-wing policies as evidence of his greatness: “He has canceled student loan debt....He has done more on climate than any other American president....His record, given a one-seat majority in the Senate is bonkers.”
When the media measure presidential greatness by the accumulation of massive new expenses and an ever-higher debt burden on citizens, they’re helping to skew the entire political system away from limited government and a thriving free market. And you can expect that if the even-more liberal Vice President Kamala Harris succeeds Biden in January, the media will be in the front row cheering her plans to even further expand the bloated government she’ll inherit from the current President.
In many ways, the worst media scandal of the past four years wasn’t journalists turning a blind eye to Biden’s physical and mental decline. It was their failure to critically examine the consequences of the hugely expensive new programs the Biden administration rammed through, which will be on the government’s balance sheet long after the President retires.
Here, from the NewsBusters’ archives, are the Top 20 media salutes to Joe Biden, starting with his Inauguration nearly four years ago:
■ “Those lights that are, that are just shooting out from the Lincoln Memorial along the reflecting pool….It’s like almost extensions of Joe Biden’s arms embracing America. It was a moment where the new President came to town and sort of convened the country in this moment of remembrance, outstretching his arms.”
— CNN Political Director David Chalian on CNN’s Inauguration coverage, January 19, 2021.
■ Co-anchor George Stephanopoulos: “Most of us will remember where we were when we heard Joe Biden take the oath of office, give his inaugural address....Echoes of Abe Lincoln.”...
Correspondent Byron Pitts: “Watching this moment, today’s inauguration felt more like a church service, right? And we see there, right after the sermon, the congregation doesn’t want to go home. People are hugging, shaking hands. I thought from Joe Biden today, certainly he was commander-in-chief, but he was also papa-in-chief. He gave a speech to comfort the nation.”
— ABC News’s live coverage of Joe Biden's Inauguration, January 20, 2021.■ “Joe Biden had to deliver the speech of his life, and he did. In my lifetime, I have never seen a more challenging inaugural address. Joe Biden’s message had to be about unity, and it had to be delivered at a time when unity was — it seemed impossible in this country….The unity Joe Biden was talking about was both poetic and realistic at the same time. What he did in about 21 minutes was absolutely astonishing under these incredibly challenging circumstances.”
— MSNBC’s The Last Word host Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC’s live coverage of Joe Biden’s Inauguration, January 20, 2021.■ Co-host John Berman: “You were at the White House after 9/11, and I’m not saying Presidents haven’t called for sacrifice before, David, but I don’t remember seeing a President lean over a podium like that and reach out and basically shake Americans by the lapels and say, ‘I need you, you know, help me.’ It was different.”
CNN political analyst David Gregory: “I was struck by the same thing....He’s been in this town for decades, as we know, but he has not lost that common touch and that is really what defines him and the empathy.”
— CNN New Day, March 12, 2021.
■ “I don’t think any Democratic president has had a more impactful first year legislatively since LBJ.”
— Correspondent John Avlon on CNN Newsroom, August 11, 2021.■ “I actually have lauded the President from the very beginning about Afghanistan. He was dealt a horrible situation. And as of today, he’s done an extremely good job in the situation….What he’s done over the course of the last week, should be congratulated on the way this was done….I think the President has done unbelievable yeoman’s work.”
— Former ABC News chief political analyst Matthew Dowd on CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront, August 24, 2021, talking about the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.
■ “Uncle Joe is back….If you didn’t believe in democracy before, if you never heard of democracy and you just looked at the body language of this guy, this guy believed every word he said....I am proud tonight we have a leader like him.”
— CNN political contributor Van Jones on CNN live coverage of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech, March 1, 2022.■ “The last six years of Obama’s administration and Donald Trump’s time in the White House, Joe Biden has done more than them — not combined, [but] two, three, four, five, six, seven times. This has been an extraordinarily successful two years, legislatively. Any way you cut it, even Republicans have to admit this privately, and they are. It’s been a hell of a run.”
— MSNBC’s Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough, August 8, 2022.■ “Pull out 20,000 feet, world stage, preventing a nuclear war, preventing World War III, check....It is all moving in Joe Biden’s direction. He’s got his aviators on, and he’s just getting it done.”
— Co-host Mika Brzezinksi on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, August 8, 2022.
■ “You know, if you add up those seven pieces of legislation, it’s a $3.5 trillion agenda that Biden and the Democrats have passed since early last year. There’s really nothing like that in terms of that scale....He is an enormously consequential president and just judging him by his legislative agenda, you know, he’s sort of in that modern pantheon now.”
— Senior political analyst Ryan Lizza on CNN’s New Day, August 8, 2022.
■ “What we saw today….was the energy, upbeat, optimistic, but you also saw Joe Biden the politician at his best.”
— Correspondent Jamie Gangel during CNN’s live coverage of the State of the Union, February 7, 2023.■ “That was a wonderful speech. Didn’t you think he was sort of Mr. Smooth?...He was elegant, he was civilized, he was conciliatory, he was reasonable, and maybe most of all, he sounded like a centrist, which is exactly where he wants to be….Biden’s speech….was quite mild and almost lovable with a lot of proposals that a lot of people are going to like.”
— MSNBC presidential historian Michael Beschloss on MSNBC’s live coverage of the State of the Union address, February 8, 2023.
■ Co-host Joe Scarborough: “He is so sharp, and he’s on top of everything….If people want to focus on him falling on a sandbag or falling off of a bike, that’s fine. But while they’re talking about that, Joe Biden’s making, you know, Europe safe for democracy.”...
Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson: “Anybody who spent any time with Joe Biden since he’s been in the Oval Office knows that the reality is [he is] nothing like the, the, the dystopian picture that the Republicans are trying to paint, of this senile, doddering president. And he’s as sharp as a tack.”
— MSNBC’s Morning Joe, July 14, 2023.■ “I can’t think of somebody else out I’d want. You name ’em. Somebody name a better — at this point — more mature mind that can attack these problems and address them with all the different levels of emotion that need to come to the moment. And, and he does it!”
— Co-host Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, November 28, 2023.
■ “I think there is a lot of trepidation and concern about his age, but like, let’s be real. Biden has done a bang-up job with the economy, he has canceled student loan debt….He has done more on climate than any other American president….His record, given a one-seat majority in the Senate is bonkers….The fact that the dude is old should not erase what is a formidable record for his first three years in office.”
— MSNBC 9pm host Alex Wagner on NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers, January 24, 2024.■ “You talk to him [Joe Biden] for hours at a time. Is he slower? Does he move slower? Yeah, he moves slower. Is he stiffer? Yeah, he moves stiffer. Does he have trouble walking sometimes? Yeah, so did FDR. We get out of the Depression, we won a G.D. war….against Nazism…Start your tape right now, because I’m about to tell you the truth. And f-you if you can’t handle the truth. This version of Biden intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second. And I’ve known him for years. The Brzezinskis have known him for 50 years. If it weren’t the truth, I wouldn’t say it.”
— Co-host Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, March 6, 2024.■ “It was like a punch in the face to every Republican in the room….Everybody knows that this was a great speech and everybody knows that if this is the message going into the next eight months, the polls will soon reflect that….A really remarkable State of the Union.
— MSNBC Deadline: White House host Nicolle Wallace during MSNBC’s live coverage of the State of the Union address, March 7, 2024.
■ “I have been saying for months and months and months that Joe Biden is old, yes, he’s slower of step, yes, but he is far from being incoherent, from having dementia, from not being in charge. Yesterday he showed he is engaged. He was impassioned. He was pissed off. Scranton Joe showed up and fought. He had his gloves on from moment one.”
— Co-host Ana Navarro on ABC’s The View, March 8, 2024.■ “You’re the kind of leader I love, because we’re lucky to have you in the Oval Office. And serving as the father of the country because if you’re a good father to your family — which you are — I know you’ll be a good father to the country.”
— Host Howard Stern to President Joe Biden on Sirius/XM’s The Howard Stern Show, April 26, 2024.■ “The choice is one terribly bad night versus a decade of destruction to our core beliefs....A man slowed down by a cold versus a man with a cold, vile, and merciless heart. I think in the days and weeks ahead as we move away from this debate, clarity will hopefully set in. For me, Joe Biden is still the man for this moment.”
— Co-host Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, July 1, 2024.
For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.
