There is a month left in Joe Biden’s lame duck presidency, and the media finally looks poised to pounce on the story of the president’s ongoing cognitive decline.
After being among the first ‘mainstream’ outlets to raise the issue earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal is out with another lengthy report about what has really been going on behind the scenes at the White House.
On Thursday’s show, Megyn was joined by Victor Davis Hanson, author of The End of Everything, to discuss the latest WSJ reporting and how this cover-up cost Democrats the 2024 election.
The WSJ Report
The Wall Street Journal published a report on Thursday titled “How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge” that offered a new peek behind the curtain dating all the way back to the 2020 election. The piece describes how “aides kept meetings short and controlled access,” “top advisers acted as go-betweens,” and “public interactions became more scripted” as the administration “denied Biden has declined.”
The article begins with an anecdote from the 2020 campaign about how Jill Biden was visiting more counties in Iowa than her husband – and gloating about it – to the point where his aides had to chastise hers and tell them to stop because it didn’t make the candidate look good.
Turns out, that was just the tip of the iceberg. The Journal reported how Cabinet members and congressmen were stiff-armed and not able to speak to the president when needed; how the Biden team brought in a voice coach recommended by Hollywood producer Jeffrey Katzenberg to try to make him sound more robust; how staffers had to keep negative news stories out of Biden’s press briefings; and how president had “good days and bad days” that led to meetings being rescheduled.
It also shed light on the lead up to Biden’s ill-fated interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur in regards to the classified documents found in his home and office. According to WSJ, Biden was extensively prepped for several hours in the lead-up but couldn’t remember prepared lines.
Hur’s damning report ultimately concluded that while Biden’s handling of classified documents “present[s] serious risks to national security,” the then-81 year old would not be prosecuted because he would likely be seen by a jury as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
Where’s the Accountability?
The Wall Street Journal was one of the few outlets that wrote about Biden’s mental acuity before his implosion on the debate stage in June, but Megyn said this report goes more in depth with more sources. “What is interesting is now more and more people are talking now,” she noted. “People on the inside of the administration are ready to own up.”
What the piece doesn’t touch on, however, is the issue of accountability. “Forget the press… Kamala Harris peddled this lie about ‘best Biden ever’ just as much as anyone,” Megyn said. “And yet she remains in an article every other day as the frontrunner for the 2028 presidential nomination on the Democrat side.”
In Megyn’s view, the “lies” about Biden’s mental fitness “cost the Democrats the White House” and she wondered if or when Harris will be held accountable for her role in that.
Hanson said the first step is keeping Harris out the Oval Office. “She is incoherent,” he said. “That speech she gave the other day… was almost as if she was intoxicated. She couldn’t form a sentence… And just the idea that she came close to the presidency is really scary.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Hanson by tuning in to episode 970 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.