The real cover-up is of Trump's disordered mental state
Sanewashing didn't end with the 2024 campaign.
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Donald Trump is consistently incoherent these days, but even when he makes sense, he’s unhinged and malicious.
Last week, Trump posted an absolutely deranged Memorial Day message, wishing a “Happy Memorial Day to all, including the scum that spent the last four years trying to destroy our country through warped radical left minds.”
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Despite the commander-in-chief seemingly suffering an all-caps mental breakdown, the media reaction was muted. A headline from The Washington Post read, “On Memorial Day, Trump honors fallen soldiers and celebrates political wins.” From CNN: “Trump honors veterans at Arlington National Cemetery after lashing out at political opponents in Memorial Day post.” And The New York Times: “Trump Praises Military, and His Return to Office, in Memorial Day Remarks.”
Over the weekend, Trump turned the insanity up to 11. On Saturday night, he shared a Truth Social post from a conspiracy theory account claiming that Joe Biden was “executed in 2020” and replaced by some sort of robot.
Needless to say, if Joe Biden posted anything close to that nuts, Sean Hannity and Jake Tapper would be roused from bed to anchor special coverage on their networks. But for Trump, this level of compete and utter batshittery is just another Saturday night.
The president spreading bonkers conspiracy theories and unleashing vicious personal attacks against his political opponents is certainly more newsworthy than when he manages to read prepared remarks. But major media also ignored how he often fails to execute that bare minimum task.
Consider Trump’s West Point commencement speech on May 24 — a rambling, garbled mess where he ranted about Al Capone, large yachts, drag queens, and “trophy” wives.
And yet, the New York Times headline for this embarrassment was simply, “Trump Gives Commencement Address at West Point, Stressing a New Era.”
Contrast this sanewashing with the unfounded accusation that the press participated in a “cover-up” of former President Biden’s age-related decline.
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The media not only didn’t ignore that Biden was old, they never shut up about it. There was exhaustive coverage when Biden fell off his bike in 2022 or tripped over a sandbag in 2023. Neither of those stories were buried within larger coverage of Biden performing normal presidential duties or even successfully behaving like a functioning adult.
Falling off a bike could signal more serious health issues, but it might just mean the president is no different than people decades younger who suffer mishaps or trip over things. Despite the endless handwringing about Biden Old, a sitting president acting like a cross between a 4Chan thread and Q truly is a major concern — one the mainstream media actively minimizes.
Total normalization
Although the press has run with a “Biden cover-up” narrative, there’s actually very little direct evidence that his age affected how he governed or, from a purely political standpoint, how the public viewed his policies.
We know this because Democrats replaced Biden on the ticket with his much younger vice president, Kamala Harris, and voter sentiment regarding the economy and immigration in particular didn’t magically improve. Some pundits have theorized that Biden’s advanced age made it easier for his staff to push him too far to the left on key issues, but there’s literally no evidence of that. It’s all speculation.
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There is, however, a direct line from Trump’s increasingly disordered rhetoric to his unpopular policies. His senseless trade war is so haphazardly destructive that CNBC senior economics reporter Steve Liesman said in March, “what President Trump is doing is insane … it is absolutely insane.” Trump has blown up America’s diplomatic relationships with our allies, including repeatedly threatening to annex Canada and Greenland against their will. It’s so bad that King Charles stated last week in Canada that “democracy, pluralism, the rule of law, self-determination, and freedom” are values Canadians prize but must “protect” from the threat Trump’s government poses.
While some stories in the press have questioned the effectiveness of Trump’s “madman theory” of foreign policy, none have directly asked whether it’s even an “act” at all. Maybe the president actually is a madman.
During Trump’s first term, the media usually treated his juvenile, pro wrestling heel approach to politics as flashy entertainment. Normalizing this behavior cheapened our political discourse, but there was a time when one could argue that Trump still governed like a replacement-level Republican. That’s no longer plausible.
When Trump calls his political opponents and the judges who dare rule against him “scum” and “USA hating,” his dehumanizing rhetoric reflects a deep-seated lawlessness. The Department of Justice, whose leash he holds, has openly threatened anyone who crosses Trump and recently pressed bogus charges against Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver and Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan.
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Trump just pardoned former Virginia Sheriff Scott Jenkins, who a jury found guilty of accepting $75,000 in bribes and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He ranted on social media that Jenkins was a "victim of an overzealous Biden Department of Justice,” a “wonderful person" who was persecuted by "Radical Left monsters" and "left for dead.” This was more than just his typical rejection of the rule of law. It’s an escalation of Trump’s paranoid delusions and persecution complex.
To put it charitably, these are more troubling traits in a president than an occasional lack of balance.
Asymmetric coverage
Biden’s age was an easier target for the media because it was something they could criticize him for without opening themselves up to accusations of bias. Although Trump’s extreme instability is more relevant, especially now that he’s president, stating the obvious might seem partisan. Who are they to tell voters that perhaps they should worry about middle-of-the-night hate rants from the guy with the nuke codes?
Democrats are also more willing to take seriously criticism of their leaders. Sure, they might push back or resort to talking points, but in Biden’s case, no one ever pretended he was 40. Democrats acknowledged he was old but argued that he was still up for the job, or at least more up for it than Trump. Voters might have disagreed, but Democrats still engaged with reality.
Republicans, by contrast, insist their Dear Leader is the world’s greatest dealmaker even as he makes no deals, personally enriches himself while in office, and singlehandedly hobbles the economy with tariffs. And yet the media continues to demand more accountability from Democrats who defended Biden than Republicans who actively support and enable a criminal president.
Fresh off turning CNN into a QVC-like informercial for his book about the alleged Biden cover-up, Jake Tapper went on Piers Morgan’s show last week and described it as “worse than Watergate” because “Richard Nixon was in control of his faculties when he wasn’t drinking.”
The comparison is absurd. Even granting that Biden’s family and closest aides tried to hide his effects of his age from the public, such a “cover-up” is quaint relative not just to Watergate, but to the current president’s unprecedented corruption, defiance of court orders, and destruction of the federal government.
Nixon covered up his personal involvement in criminal activity, but Trump is also covering up his own obvious mental deterioration. Even as the Trump administration attempt to shake down Paramount for 60 Minutes’ light editing of an interview with Kamala Harris, the White House is removing official transcripts of Trump’s rambling public remarks from its government website, instead offering selectively curated and edited videos. (The clip below illustrates how they’re doing that.)
There’s another key difference between Watergate and what’s happening right now: Nixon’s paranoia led to his personal self-destruction, but Trump’s instability is an active threat to the entire free world.
The media has indulged in a lot of conveniently after-the-fact handwringing over Biden’s age and how Democrats dealt with it. The reality is that Biden was old but governed normally. Trump governs erratically because he’s unglued. That’s the true cover-up, one the media is enabling when they seem more concerned with the mental condition of a former president than the escalating madness of the current one.
