The Biden Media Cover-Up Wasn’t a Reckoning, It Was a Rebrand

The Post That Exposed the Game

Batya Ungar-Sargon didn’t mince words. In her viral post, she directly addressed the Biden media cover-up. In fact, In a single post on May 13, 2025, she called out the liberal media and Democratic operatives for covering up President Biden’s decline, then turning on him once he was no longer politically useful, and demanding praise for it. Her take wasn’t just brutal. It was accurate. What followed wasn’t a reckoning. It was a rebrand.

“The same people who lied about Biden for as long as it was politically expedient, then knifed him and ritually humiliated him when he could no longer give them the power they crave now want kudos for this fake reckoning so they can start amassing power again. It’s repulsive.” — Batya Ungar-Sargon

The Power Play: Why They Hid Biden’s Decline

The decision to run Biden in 2024 wasn’t driven by confidence, it was driven by calculation. Despite clear signs of cognitive decline, Democratic leaders and campaign strategists doubled down, propping him up as the only viable path to power. This wasn’t just a misread. It was a strategic gamble that they could once again carry Biden over the finish line while keeping the truth buried.

David Plouffe, a top strategist, didn’t hold back in Original Sin, admitting that the post-Biden fallout was a “fucking nightmare,” blaming Biden for derailing Harris’s campaign against Trump. But Plouffe’s anger reveals more than just frustration. It shows how the party viewed Biden less as a leader and more as a placeholder, useful until he wasn’t.

The real scandal isn’t that Biden declined. It’s that powerful people saw it happening, denied it, and then turned on him the moment it became a liability. They didn’t come clean. They cut loose, and called it courage.

Media Complicity in the Biden Media Cover-Up

The media didn’t just miss the signs. They helped bury them. It was a full-blown Biden media cover-up, packaged as professionalism. For years, journalists at CNN, MSNBC, and major newspapers downplayed Biden’s mental stumbles as nothing more than gaffes or a lingering stutter. It wasn’t reporting. It was running interference.

Jake Tapper, now co-author of Original Sin, was once one of Biden’s most vocal defenders. In 2020, he dismissed concerns about Biden’s health as “Republican talking points.” Even after the disastrous 2024 debate, Tapper insisted, “Let’s not overread this. He’s been a strong leader for three years.” Fast forward to 2025, and he’s selling books detailing Biden’s decline as if he just discovered the truth.

Alex Thompson followed a similar arc. While reporting for Axios in 2021, he wrote glowingly of Biden’s energy and focus on the world stage. No mention of the president’s reduced schedule or reliance on aides. Today, he claims the decline began as early as 2015.

Morning Joe wasn’t any better. Joe Scarborough repeatedly claimed Biden was “cogent and ready to fight” as recently as July 2024. Mika Brzezinski echoed those defenses. Now that it’s politically safe, they’ve pivoted to expressions of concern.

The media’s sudden honesty isn’t a correction. It’s a brand pivot, meant to preserve credibility after the damage was done.

Narcissism and Self-Preservation

However, this wasn’t just about politics. It was about ego. When the truth became a threat to their image, the people who sold the lie were quick to rebrand themselves as heroes.

The PMC study on narcissistic leadership explains a lot. In uncertain times, people gravitate toward confident figures—even when that confidence is hollow. Biden was packaged as a steady hand, not because he was, but because it made voters and media allies feel safe.

Plouffe’s infamous quote—“He totally fucked us”—isn’t about concern for the country. It’s about frustration that Biden’s unraveling wrecked their plans. That’s not leadership. That’s vanity.

The media mirrored this behavior. Tapper and Thompson’s book wasn’t an act of courage. It was a carefully timed exit ramp from complicity. They didn’t blow the whistle when it mattered. They waited until it sold.

These aren’t the actions of watchdogs. They’re the reflexes of self-preservers, desperate to stay clean after the flood.

The Morning Joe Pivot

Few media figures were closer to Biden than the Morning Joe crew. Scarborough and Brzezinski didn’t just defend him. They practically endorsed him.

After the 2024 debate fiasco, Biden came on their show to do damage control. Scarborough’s response? “The president was cogent, focused, and ready to fight.” That clip aged like milk. Behind the scenes, many Democrats were already panicking, but Morning Joe told the public everything was fine.

Back in 2021, when Biden dozed off at a climate summit, Scarborough brushed it off as fatigue from nonstop work. Brzezinski followed suit. They weren’t just allies. They were image managers.

Now, with Original Sin making waves, Scarborough’s tune has changed. He’s suddenly asking “hard questions” about what the White House knew. But there’s no acknowledgment of how Morning Joe helped shape the very narrative that buried the truth.

They had a platform. They had influence. Still, they chose comfort over candor, and now they want to join the truth parade without admitting they were leading the spin.

The Reckoning as Performance

This isn’t accountability. It’s a performance of it. Even so, the people who denied, deflected, and defended Biden’s decline are now positioning themselves as truth-tellers. Not because they’ve changed. Because the audience has.

Tapper and Thompson’s book isn’t a public service. It’s a product launch. One that allows them to sell a narrative shift while distancing themselves from the part they played in the original cover-up.

Jan Crawford at CBS finally admitted, “We should have much more forcefully questioned whether he was fit for office.” That’s not a correction. That’s a confession made too late to matter.

Meanwhile, the same figures who shamed critics of Biden’s mental fitness as cruel or conspiratorial are now nodding solemnly on panels, reflecting on how “hard” it was to speak out. The only thing hard was waiting until it was safe to cash in.

Ungar-Sargon was right. This isn’t a reckoning. It’s reputation management, marketed as moral clarity.

Public Frustration and the Cultural Shift

Americans didn’t need a book to see Biden’s decline. They watched it unfold in real time, only to be told by the media that their eyes were lying. That gaslighting created a backlash—one that’s still simmering.

From viral clips to meme accounts, regular people knew something was wrong. But if they said so, they were mocked as conspiracy theorists or ageist bigots. Now, those same media figures are validating what millions saw and felt. It’s not just hypocrisy. It’s insult on top of injury.

This reckoning didn’t start in a newsroom. It started on X, YouTube, and dinner tables across the country. And it isn’t just about Biden. It’s about a media and political class that thinks image is more important than honesty—and assumes the public is too dumb to notice.

Ultimately, they did notice. And they’re done being told to sit down and shut up. This isn’t just a crisis of politics. It’s a collapse of trust.

Conclusion: The Biden Media Cover-Up Was No Reckoning

This wasn’t a bold act of journalism or party accountability. It was a pivot. A reputational cleanse. The same people who sold the lie are now trying to sell the redemption arc.

But Americans aren’t buying it.

Biden’s decline wasn’t hidden because it was invisible. It was hidden because the people with power, political and media alike, needed it to be. And once that story could no longer hold, they flipped the script and pretended they were always the ones who cared.

This wasn’t a reckoning. It was a rerun.

If there’s any reckoning left to have, it won’t come from the networks, nor from the party insiders. It’ll come from the people who’ve been paying attention all along. And they’re not asking for permission anymore.

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