MSNBC host Joy Reid brushed off the fall, accusing ‘Twitter and the right’ of ‘going crazy’ over nothing.
Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we look at the media’s reaction to President Biden’s recent fall, catch up with some hard-hitting news from Rolling Stone, and cover more media misses.
Another Round of ‘Republicans Pounce’
President Biden’s fall at the Air Force Academy graduation ceremony in Colorado last week heightened existing concerns about the 80-year-old president’s age and his fitness for the role. But to hear pundits tell it, only Republicans and Biden critics are concerned by the octogenarian president tripping over a sandbag and taking a very public spill.
“Given voters’ concern about his age, this is an image that his critics are already capitalizing on and pouncing on,” ABC White House correspondent Mary Bruce said on World News Tonight. CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell said the fall “has already become a talking point for Republicans running for the White House.”
White House correspondent Kristen Welker said on NBC Nightly News the fall “is not a helpful image for the White House.”
Days after Biden tripped, the New York Times brought readers “Inside the Complicated Reality of Being America’s Oldest President.”
“The two Joe Bidens coexist in the same octogenarian president: Sharp and wise at critical moments, the product of decades of seasoning, able to rise to the occasion even in the dead of night to confront a dangerous world,” a team of four reporters wrote. “Yet a little slower, a little softer, a little harder of hearing, a little more tentative in his walk, a little more prone to occasional lapses of memory in ways that feel familiar to anyone who has reached their ninth decade or has a parent who has.”
The article says “like many his age,” Biden “repeats phrases and retells the same story, often fact-challenged stories again and again.”
While the reporters describe Biden as “trim and fit” and note he has “exhibited striking stamina,” the article also includes claims that officials try to leave Biden alone on weekends and try to schedule all of his public appearances between 12 p.m. and 4 p.m. Aides have also been limiting his exposure to the media and have noticed “small changes” in the president, according to the report.
“When he sits down, one former official said, he usually places a hand on his desk to hold his weight and rarely springs back up with his old energy,” it adds.
The article also brings former president Donald Trump into the conversation about mental acuity and physical condition.
“He did not exercise, his diet leaned heavily on cheeseburgers and steak and he officially tipped the scales at 244 pounds, a weight formally deemed obese for his height,” the article reads. “After complaining that he was over scheduled with morning meetings, Mr. Trump stopped showing up at the Oval Office until 11 or 11:30 a.m. each day, staying in the residence to watch television, make phone calls or send out incendiary tweets. During an appearance at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, he had trouble lifting a glass of water and seemed to have trouble making his way down a modest ramp.”
Biden himself made jokes about Trump’s difficulty walking down the ramp at a commencement speech in 2020: “Look at how he steps and look at how I step. Watch how I run up ramps and he stumbles down ramps,” he said at the time. “Come on.”
The Trump incident led CNN guests to suggest he might be struggling with “neurological” problems. The Times reported in 2020 that the “halting walk” down the ramp “raises new health questions.”
But when it was Biden who took a fall, MSNBC host Joy Reid brushed it off as “Twitter and the right . . . going crazy” over the president tripping on a sandbag.
“I trip in my own house,” Reid said and then asked former White House press secretary Jen Psaki if Biden is “so enraging to the right because he is so normal? What do you think it is about him that drives them nuts?”
Psaki responded that Republicans “can’t make him extreme” or “offensive.”
She said Biden is “comfortable” to many Republican voters because he’s a “white man who’s older.”
During an appearance on CNN, Representative Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) offered his own defense of Biden after the fall.
“Are voters wrong to be worried about re-electing a man who would be closer to 90 at the end of his second term than 80?” CNN’s Dana Bash asked Raskin.
“You know, America is a country that loves youth and vitality, you know, which is why we have laws against age discrimination, because we tend to favor youthfulness and the new thing. In a lot of countries, people who have been in office a longer period of time are praised for their wisdom,” Raskin said.
He continued: “And I think that Joe Biden rightly says that he has grown very wise in his many decades in public office and I respect that. So, I think that he deserved to be judged by the results of his administration and what he’s gotten done in terms of a bipartisan infrastructure law, the Inflation Reduction Act, lowering prescription drug prices. I mean, really, that’s what should matter to us as the people.”
Headline Fail of the Week
Breaking news from Rolling Stone: “Furries Now Have Serious Beef With Ron DeSantis.”
“A furry fandom con in Florida just announced it would ban minors based on the governor’s ridiculous laws,” the outlet reports.
“Florida Gov. and GOP presidential nominee Ron DeSantis has successfully sucked the pleasure out of many of life’s little joys, from drag brunches to Disney adult TikTok. And thanks to the passage of SB 1438, or the Protection of Children Act, DeSantis may now be bringing the ax down on furries,” Rolling Stone senior writer Ej Dickson writes.
The decision to prohibit minors from attending Megaplex, an Orlando-based convention for furries, came in response to SB 1438, which makes “knowingly admitting a child to an adult live performance” a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by a year of prison and/or a $1,000 fine.
“And, like drag, there are pervasive misconceptions that this mode of expression is inherently sexual,” Dickson writes.
“While it is true that there is a segment of furrydom that does treat it as a kink, it is not a representation of the wider community, and many furries do not view their interest in anthropomorphized creatures as sexual at all. Though many conventions do cater to the NSFW aspects of the furry fandom, they typically save such programming for later at night to ensure the rest of the con is family-friendly, or cordon off adult vendors so they are not in full view of other attendees,” the article adds.
A furry fandom con in Florida just announced it would ban minors based on the governor's ridiculous lawshttps://t.co/oC65zi4Xz3
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) May 25, 2023
Media Misses
- Senator Tim Scott (R., S.C.) appeared on The View on Monday, two weeks after Whoopi Goldberg accused the Republican presidential candidate of having “Clarence Thomas syndrome” and using the word “victimhood” as a “dog whistle.” Scott offered a refutation of the host’s “dangerous, offensive, disgusting message” that the “only way for a young African American kid to be successful in this country is to be the exception.”
Yesterday’s exception is today’s rule.
The concept of America is we will become a more perfect union. pic.twitter.com/6sAj424vgy
— Tim Scott (@votetimscott) June 5, 2023
- Katie Baker, the executive editor of the Daily Beast, called Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis a “Walmart Melania” in an op-ed over the weekend after she donned a leather jacket featuring an alligator and an outline of the Sunshine State with the phrase, “Where woke goes to die.””Casey DeSantis’ coat is just like her husband Ron DeSantis’ campaign: Crude. Grasping. Saying the ugly part out loud,” Baker wrote. “DeSantis wants to peel off Trump’s base by being even more explicit about who he intends to target. You can see it right there on his wife’s jacket: DeSantis’ Florida is where the woke go to die — and a lot of other people die as well.”
- The Washington Examiner recently issued a correction on an article that mentioned Trump’s comments about it being “radical” to kill a baby in the seventh, eighth, or ninth month of pregnancy, or even after the baby is born. The piece initially said, “It’s unclear what exactly Trump was referring to when talking about killing babies after they are born. His comments about killing babies are also, on their face, scientifically inaccurate. Unborn children are called fetuses after the embryo take and before birth, according to Medline Plus.” It was later amended to read “Trump did not elaborate on what he meant about killing babies after they are born, but he was likely referring to partial-birth and late-term abortions.” The Daily Signal’s Mary Margaret Olohan reported that it was an editor who included the initial reference to Medline Plus, not the reporter who wrote the story.
What the hell is this from @dcexaminer? pic.twitter.com/vIzbRjuyxj
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) June 2, 2023