‘Did You See Him!?’ Mark Halperin Hammers WaPo Alum Glenn Kessler Over the Soft Coverage of Biden’s Decline

Isaac SchorrAug 8th, 2025, 1:12 pm

Mark Halperin refused to let former Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler off the hook during a conversation about Kessler and the Post‘s coverage of former President Joe Biden’s decline on Thursday’s edition of Next Up with Mark Halperin.

“Now, let me ask you about something you wrote that has gotten a lot of attention from conservatives about the so-called deepfake videos regarding Joe Biden. When you looked at the question of whether the videos being played largely in conservative media that showed apparent cognitive decline of the president, what conclusion did you reach in Fact Checker about those videos?” asked Halperin to kick off the conversation.

Kessler explained that the column in question was specifically about an incident in which Biden walked away from a group of world leader to talk to parachutists, but that some videos online were mischaracterizing him as wandering off in a random direction.

“I have said this before, that you know, fact checks are a compliment to the news coverage, not a supplement,” said Kessler before defending the Post‘s overall handling of the Biden story.

“But the power of the Pinocchios, and the power of the fact check, when you write that, people see that and say, ‘The Washington Post is saying that that video is not reflective of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline.’ That’s what people take from that. They do! They do! Glenn, they do. You know the power that you had in that job. So do you think The Washington Post-, how would you rate the job The Washington Post did in covering Joe Biden’s-,not his age, not whether David Ignatius thought he should run again, but how good a job would you say the Post did in covering the reality of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline?” followed up Halperin.

“I would say… so, there was a lot of effort to produce a story that would look very carefully at what seemed to be a cognitive decline. It never came together because we couldn’t get enough people on the record,” answered Kessler.

But Halperin wasn’t having any of it.

“Do you know the moment where Joe Biden spoke to a dead congresswoman at a public event? Are you familiar with that moment?” he inquired.

“Yes, yes, yes,” replied Kessler.

“Okay, what kind of sourcing did you need to say Joe Biden was suffering cognitive decline? Did you see him trailing off regularly? What kind of sourcing was needed?” asked Halperin incredulously.

The pair continued:

KESSLER: I’m telling you, there was a lot of effort to produce the story, you know, you know, that you are asking for, and it didn’t come together. That is my understanding. I was not in the meetings, and yes, in retrospect, one could say, “God, that was a real missed opportunity.” It’s also difficult when you’re taking on the President of the United States and saying, and you want to say, “Okay, we think there’s a cognitive decline and we wanna get people on the record as actually saying this.” Because it’s a very serious accusation. And you know that on the Left, there’s all this chatter about Trump’s cognitive issues. Now, you know-

HALPERIN: But Glenn, when you write a column that says, “the RNC is producing misleading video because Joe Biden wandered off and talked to paratroopers,” that is taking the credibility and power of you, the Fact Checker column, and The Washington Post and saying, in effect, not “this one little thing is wrong, but, oh, let’s remind you that he talked to a dead congresswoman.” You are saying in that column to any normal reader, The Washington Post is saying the chatter of that cognitive decline is made up. That’s what it’s saying.

KESSLER: No, whoa, whoa whoa whoa. If you go-, Mark, if you back and look at that fact check-

HALPERIN: Read it 20 times.

KESSLER: The very first paragraph talks about how polling shows that most Americans feel that Biden is too old to run for president. It then goes on that, you know, narratives stick when they deal with a larger truth. We were looking specifically at that video and letting-, and we showed the full context of the video you showed he was talking to-, and I recently reviewed that column because I got subject of a nasty editorial in The New York Post. I feel, you may think I’m crazy and your viewers may think I’m crazy, but I think in the context in which I wrote that, that column still stands up even though we now know that Joe Biden had issues.

HALPERIN: But you say we now know. You didn’t know he had the issues when you watched public videos of him for four years as president? The fact that he didn’t have press conferences, he didn’t do a single interview with The Washington Post news section? That didn’t make you think he was having cognitive decline?

KESSLER: I don’t believe Donald Trump has done a single interview with The Washington Post news section. I think Barack Obama maybe did one over eight years.

HALPERIN: Okay, but Glenn don’t seize on that. Did you not see indications, did you not see indications of cognitive decline for Joe Biden before the debate?