Washington Post imitates the Babylon Bee

If you want to see a devastating snapshot of the partisan reports that now pass for journalism, just juxtapose two articles in the Washington Post. Published a month apart, they report on the same event: the Hollywood fundraiser for President Joe Biden, hosted by George Clooney and Julia Roberts and featuring former president Barack Obama.

The first article, published immediately after the event, stressed the glitz and glamour. The headline captured the tone, “Biden, Obama warn of Trump dangers in star-studded LA fundraiser.” It was all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, marred only by a few sentences about pro-Palestinian demonstrators outside the event. The reporter, Yasmeen Abutaleb, didn’t say one word about Biden’s frail condition or, indeed, any of the problems the public now sees. Not one word.

A month later, WaPo effectively said it was all a cover-up, without mentioning the inconvenient fact that they were a big part of it.  In a huge article in the Friday paper, the Post noted that, although the fundraiser brought in lots of campaign cash, it actually undermined Biden’s backing among the glam, progressive crowd, who saw the president’s physical and cognitive decline up-close and personal. They were shocked. The article was entitled, “Inside the glitzy fundraiser where Biden lost George Clooney.”

The subtitle is even harsher. “Some donors who attended the June 15 event at LA’s Peacock Theater said this week that they noticed Biden seemed slow. He seemed frail. As he greeted donors lined up for photos, he trailed off or spoke too quietly to be heard.” The rest of the article, reported by Dan Diamond, Samuel Oakford and Carol D. Leonnig, was filled with damning but anonymous quotes about Biden’s declining health, which deeply disturbed major donors who hadn’t seen the president in several months.

Besides the three principal reporters, the article lists four more who contributed to the report. Ace reporter, Yasmeen Abutaleb, the one on the scene at the event, was nowhere to be found.

The money quote in the latest article, “Many attendees — led by Clooney — now say they watched a dud and a preview screening of what the nation saw two weeks later in Biden’s prime-time debate against Trump.”

The press, including the Post, failed in its core duty when it failed to report that salient health issue. They played the same role as partisan donors, who now tell the Post they deliberately lied to avoid hurting Biden’s reelection campaign.

“Several reporters were present for the president’s interview with Jimmy Kimmel at the LA fundraiser,” Lauren Hitt, a campaign spokesperson, said in a statement. “None of them reported out anything like this at the time.”

The donor [who remains anonymous] said she and her husband were asked by friends after the event about Biden’s condition and “struggled to answer them honestly,” fearful of eroding Biden’s support.

“We were worried that if we told the truth — that President Biden was stiff, slow and dare we say it, fragile — that we risked losing their support for the president,” said the donor. “It was painful to be deceptive. Now, we realize we were not alone in withholding what we experienced.”

Why did the Post report it now? For the same partisan reasons they failed to report it earlier. They are part of the Democratic elite that now grasp what the party’s voters have been telling pollsters for months, what the public could see as Obama guided Biden off-stage in Los Angeles, what the nation saw in the catastrophic debate against Trump.

What the insiders now realize is that Biden could not only lose the White House, he could cost the Democrats the House and Senate and any chance to make Supreme Court appointments for another four years.

Those Democratic insiders include the legacy media, led by the New York Times, Washington Post and three major networks. They are an integral part of that Democratic Party’s institutional base. Faced with Biden’s electoral troubles, they have turned on him and keep turning up the volume to force him out. That’s why the latest Washington Post report looks so different from the one a month ago.

Two things had changed over that month. First, the debate and Biden’s subsequent stumbles made it impossible to persuade the public that their own eyes were fooling them. Second, the polls show that the Democrats face a hard, uphill battle in November with Biden at the top of the ticket. A partisan media fears that defeat.

Who captured the media’s shame? It was the true newspaper of record, the Babylon Bee. Their deliciously ironic headline, “Media Who Refused To Report On Biden’s Decline Furious That Nobody Reported On Biden’s Decline.” The Bee’s parody reporting is pitch perfect.

“Whose job was it to report about this?!” demanded CNN correspondent Jim Acosta…  “The fact that there weren’t reliable people on hand to witness President Biden’s decline and make sure everyone was made aware of it is unacceptable. We deserve answers.”

Yes, we do. But don’t expect to hear any from the feckless folks who spent the last year sweeping mounds of dirt under the rug.