Tag: media
Joe Biden

After Biden Speech, Republicans (And Media) Need A New Narrative

Well, that settles it. President Joe Biden can’t possibly win this thing.

Just like Republicans have been telling Americans all along, Biden is too aggressive, too energetic, too fiery, too feisty, too forceful, too loud, too partisan, and definitely too political.

Also, he talks too long, tells too many jokes, and too often goes off-script to spar with opponents. If all that isn’t bad enough, Biden wants to talk to members of Congress when it’s late and decent Republicans are very, very sleepy.

It’s just like they’ve been saying all along. Biden’s age is an issue. Maybe he’ll be more presidential in 2032.

Biden’s 2024 State of the Union speech clocked in at 1 hour, 7 minutes, and 17 seconds. That doesn’t make it the longest speech on record, but considering the clip at which Biden blasted through the material (about 6,400 words in the transcript, more in real life), he packed a lot into that space.

“I know I may not look like it,” said Biden, “but I’ve been around a while.” And in his time in Washington, Biden has clearly learned how to deliver a speech that absolutely confounds both his opponents and a media that had already scheduled plenty of lazy “Biden too old” editorials between now and November.

Three weeks ago, The New York Times was explaining how the age issue that they’ve been pushing 24 hours a day sticks to Biden so much more than to Donald Trump. “Mr. Biden’s voice has grown softer and raspier,” wrote reporter Rebecca Davis O’Brien, and he “moves more tentatively than he did as a candidate in 2019 and 2020, often holding his upper body stiff, adding to an impression of frailty.”

When it comes to Trump, the same article explained that he “holds forth in speeches replete with macho rhetoric and bombast that typically last well over an hour, a display of stamina.”

After Thursday night, both The New York Times and the Republican Party are going to need a new playbook. The Joe Biden who stepped to the podium on Thursday and then stayed in the House chamber so long that the perpetually dyspeptic Speaker Mike Johnson, who dashed home to find his rapture-ready PJs, was not the Joe Biden they’ve been describing.

Biden’s forceful entry into the chamber on Thursday evening, his fast-forward, high-energy delivery, and his absolute eagerness to engage whenever Republicans booed or refused to applaud the most fundamental issue was an absolute joy. He came in hot, only seemed to grow in energy and confidence through the night, and came off the winner every time he sparred with just-say-no-to-everything Republicans.

In his speech, Biden was the happy warrior of American politics. If he had the occasional stumble, it was seemingly because he just could not wait to tell you not just about the things he had done, but also about all the things left to do in making American lives better.

Meanwhile, Johnson sat behind him like a bobblehead whose spring had been wrongly inserted, shaking his head so many times that he is likely spending this morning at the chiropractor. Out in the audience, Republicans intent on mocking Biden instead ended up being an obvious self-parody—something that should have been obvious the moment Biden strolled down the aisle, saw Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s clown suit, and took her apart with no more than an expression.

Only a few minutes into the speech, Republicans were claiming that the guy they’d been describing as little short of comatose was too fast, too loud, and definitely too political. That last part was especially offensive to classy Republicans and the memory of Trump’s completely nonpartisan performances (I mean, it’s not as if Trump had a campaign rally at the White House).

In one night, Biden went from “Sleepy Joe” to “Jacked-Up Joe” as Republicans scrambled for a new handle on the president.

In his speech, Biden made some very gutsy announcements, such as laying out plans for an aid port in Gaza, forcefully talking about America’s role in expanding NATO and the need for Ukraine assistance, and putting abortion issues front and center while telling the Supreme Court to prepare to hear from American women.

If Republicans didn’t like what they were seeing, Americans watching the speech certainly did. As Daily KosKerry Eleveld reported, potential voters in Arizona were turning up the live-reaction dials for Navigator Research, highlighting many parts of the speech that had them excited. A CNN quick poll found that 64 percent of those watching had a positive reaction to the speech, and after watching the speech, there was a 17-percentage-point increase among those saying that Biden’s policies will move the nation in the right direction.

Republicans were left sputtering over Biden’s display of vigor and command. Much of the press was left scrambling to find more synonyms for “energetic.” And viewers were largely left convinced that Biden had the right plan for America.

It’s hard to describe a more successful combination.

Meanwhile, down at Mar-a-Lago, Trump had promised to provide his own live commentary on the speech, but technical issues had him fuming on the sidelines for much of the evening. When he did get his chance to talk, Trump became obsessed with the fact that Biden was occasionally coughing and convinced that the president’s rapid-fire delivery was the product of stimulants.

It’s hard to dispute that Trump may be the expert when it comes to a White House allegedly “awash in speed.” But as Biden’s speech moved toward its conclusion, Trump delivered a meme-worthy “Truth.”

If by that Trump means the drugs that kept America complacent while he speed-walked the nation toward an authoritarian regime, then he’s absolutely right.

In his speech, Biden told everyone to “wake up.” And maybe, just maybe, it worked.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Medical Experts See 'Gross Signs Of Dementia' Whenever Trump Speaks

Medical Experts See 'Gross Signs Of Dementia' Whenever Trump Speaks

Right-have media outlets have been obsessed with 81-year-old President Joe Biden's age, often conflating his gaffes with mental impairment while portraying 77-year-old Donald Trump as youthful and energetic — and either ignoring or downplaying Trump's verbal difficulties, such as confusing former South Carolina Nikki Haley with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) during a recent speech.

Salon's Chauncey DeVega makes a Biden/Trump comparison in an article published on March 7 and reports that Trump's problems, according to medical experts, are much worse.

"Whatever one may think of Donald Trump the political leader, and all of the evil and vile things he has done in that capacity, he is a human being who appears to be in crisis," DeVega warns. "Moreover, that Donald Trump is leading President Biden in the polls and has a real chance of becoming the next president of the United States should be a source of great alarm for anyone who claims to care about the wellbeing of the country and its future."

One of the Salon interviewees quoted in DeVega's report is Dr. John Gartner, a psychologist and former professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Gartner told Salon, "Not enough people are sounding the alarm that based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented. In fact, we are seeing the opposite among too many in the news media, the political leaders and among the public. There is also this focus on Biden's gaffes or other things that are well within the normal limits of aging. By comparison, Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia. This is a tale of two brains: Biden's brain is aging, Trump's brain is dementing."

Harry Segal of Cornell University and Weill Cornell Medical School notes that Trump's campaign speeches have been increasingly "erratic."

Segal told Salon, "In the past six months, Trump's rallies are filled with strange lapses of logic. He has confused Biden with (Barack) Obama, spoke of World War 2, and has lapsed into bewildering digressions that are hard to follow. Only this weekend, he said, 'We have languages coming into our country that no one can speak' — a strange grasping for meaning, bordering on neologism. At other times, he seems to get lost in the middle of a sentence."

Vincent Greenwood, executive director of the Washington Center For Cognitive Therapy, argues that Trump is showing "confusion with increasing regularity."

Greenwood told Salon, "We all stumble over and mispronounce words occasionally. This is not what is going on with Trump. The incidence of these kinds of mistakes takes him into this realm of phonemic paraphasia, which is a sign of underlying brain damage, not just aging. Even when compared to his speech of a few years ago, you can observe a noticeable difference. When you compare it to his speech as a middle-aged man, the shift is radical and ominous."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Moms for Liberty founders, Tiffany Justice, left, and Tina Descovich

After '60 Minutes' Debacle, Mom For Liberty Scurries To Bannon 'War Room'

Following a disastrous interview on 60 Minutes, Tiffany Justice – a co-founder of the extremist group Moms for Liberty – retreated to the friendlier terrain of Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast in an attempt to mitigate the damage she’d done to her organization.

Bannon and Justice spent nearly 11 minutes criticizing CBS’ Scott Pelley for supposedly subjecting the anti-LGBTQ activist to unfair scrutiny, primarily by reading Moms for Liberty’s own tweets to her and asking for her response. At one point, Pelley asked Justice and her fellow Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich what they meant by “grooming.” At another, Pelley asked for clarification on what ideology they claimed kids were being indoctrinated into. Justice and Descovich responded by dodging and retreating to their standard talking points.

It’s no surprise that Justice sought to clean up her mess using Bannon’s show. She usedWar Room and other right-wing media programs to build up Moms for Liberty in 2021 and 2022, and then leveraged that growth into a series of friendly mainstream media profiles and interviews. Now, as parents and communities become more aware of her organization’s extreme, anti-LGBTQ and anti-Black positions, they are fighting back, as demonstrated in the 60 Minutes segment.

During the War Room interview, Justice accused 60 Minutes of deceptively editing her responses.

“You’re saying they selectively edited out your answers?” Bannon asked.

“Yeah, they wanted to make it seem like Tina and I didn’t know what we were talking about, I guess,” Justice responded.

On X (formerly Twitter) Descovich posted what she claimed were excerpts from the official transcript of the interview, purportedly exposing CBS’s omissions. The only problem with the Moms for Liberty counter-narrative is that the exchanges Descovich posted were just as incoherent as the responses CBS aired.

“If there are any lawyers watching this and you’d like to try to help me to navigate dealing with 60 Minutes, I’m open to ideas,” Justice said later in the interview. “But I’ve been talking with a few and trying to figure out —”

“Are you thinking of suing 60 Minutes?” Bannon interjected.

“I want to make sure I’m releasing information in a legal way,” Justice responded.

Bannon also said CBS was trying to make Moms for Liberty look like “bad and evil people, that are hurting people, bullies, whatever you want to call it,” as though that were self-evidently false. Unsurprisingly, Bannon didn’t mention the myriad examples of Moms for Liberty harassing and intimidating teachers and administrators, including an incident where Justice’s conduct was “so disruptive and disrespectful,” according to a superintendent, that she “could be barred from the campus.”

Later in the War Room segment, Bannon told Justice that Moms for Liberty was “trending” on X and that “one of the terms is Klansman Karenhood,” adding, “They’re trying to say you’re the new Klan.”

“They are out to destroy you,” Bannon said to conclude the interview. Despite Bannon’s trademark bombast, it might just be that parents and teachers are opposed to a group that has repeatedly quoted Hitler and attempts to ban books in schools.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

New Video Shows Trump Babbling Nonsense 32 Times In One Day

New Video Shows Trump Babbling Nonsense 32 Times In One Day

A video compilation purports to show 32 times Donald Trump forgot words, mispronounced or mixed up names, got confused, or just “babbled insane nonsense” during his two campaign speeches on Saturday.

The video, posted to social media by attorney and MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski, lasts under three minutes, and has gotten 1.3 million views in under 30 hours.

“’Anybody that loves me, I like them’ – a reminder of how easy it is to play or manipulate Trump and how, per his own words, he has zero principles or values and operates on a purely narcissistic, self-serving basis,” observed journalist Mehdi Hasan, quoting Trump from the video.

“And yet again the media will be primarily focused on Biden’s age,” lamented pollster and MSNBC political analyst Cornell Belcher. “As if Biden simply being old with no credible ethics issues is somehow equivalent to Trump’s clear cognitive problems along with 90+ criminal counts & an attempt to overthrow an election. Make it make sense.”

MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Monday did a segment on what it called Trump’s “public gaffes.”

“The guy just kept getting confused,” co-host Joe Scarborough told viewers as he introduced video.

“We see it more and more,” Scarborough added, calling it “pathetic and sad.”

“He looks lost.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.