There's a reason that President Joe Biden's advisers keep his access to the press as minimal as they can. They don't trust him to answer reporters in a way that helps his standing in the polls. It's likely that he'll lose his temper, or he'll lie preposterously.
On Dec. 6, on the cusp of a Republican presidential debate, Biden somehow allowed a question from Steven Nelson of the New York Post. This is probably why Joe mumbles about a list he's been given of acceptable reporters to call on. This time -- oops -- he stumbled into a serious questioner. Until recently, Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had refused to call on Nelson since May.
Nelson announced: "There's polling by the Associated Press that shows that almost 70% of Americans, including 40% of Democrats, believe that you acted either illegally or unethically in regards to your family's business interests. Can you explain to the Americans, amid this impeachment inquiry, why you interacted with so many of your son and brother's foreign business associates?"
Biden lied preposterously. He denied there had been any contacts, when the contacts are an undeniable fact, even if the pro-Biden media studiously pretend they don't exist. "I'm not going to comment on that. I did not," said the president. "And it's just a bunch of lies." Nelson began to respond: "You didn't interact with ..." Biden said: "They're lies!" Nelson finished: "...any of their business associates?" Biden repeated: "I did not. They're lies!"
This stunning denial of reality was typically ignored by the evening "news" programs of ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS. The only mention of Biden on "PBS NewsHour" that night came from Hollywood leftist Rob Reiner. In an interview celebrating Norman Lear, Reiner asserted, "Norman would want me to be saying this ... if you want fascism, you vote for Trump. If you want democracy, you will vote for Biden. It's that simple, and it's that real."
It's this hyperbolic paranoia that inspires ignoring Biden's ridiculous denials. Let's guess in their newsrooms, they tell one another, "We can't blur Biden with Trump on the lying, so let's ignore all of this! Democracy itself is in the balance!"
New York Post columnist Miranda Devine quoted from former Biden business associate Tony Bobulinski, who told the Post, "Why is Joe Biden blatantly lying to the American people and the world by claiming that he did not meet with me face to face? He should call his son Hunter and brother Jim as they can remind him of the facts. The American people deserve the truth."
The liberal networks also pretend Bobulinski doesn't exist. None of them have interviewed him on camera. A Nexis search of PBS transcripts came up with zero. CBS mentioned him briefly in a September 2022 story on Hunter's laptop.
What about the pro-Biden newspapers? New York Times reporter Peter Baker just repeated the lie without correcting it! His colleague Luke Broadwater did the same: "When questioned by a reporter at the White House on Wednesday about why he 'interacted' with his son's and brother's business associates, President Biden replied tersely, 'I did not, and it's just a bunch of lies.'"
In The Washington Post, White House reporter Matt Viser just ended his story with Biden's lie, uncorrected. The Post also had an AP story by Lindsay Whitehurst, which altered the context of Nelson's question: "President Biden on Wednesday dismissed as 'lies' claims that he behaved illegally or unethically regarding the business dealings of his son."
Biden has zero fear of Biden-voting reporters or "independent fact-checkers." They're like a journalistic Secret Service.
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.