MSNBC Has a Joe Biden Problem

(AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

Over the past two weeks there has been a robust national discussion about former President Joe Biden, his mental acuity in the last year or so of his time in the White House, and an alleged conspiracy by senior aides to keep his decline hidden from not just public view, but also others in the Democratic Party.

The coverage has been intense, led by CNN’s coverage of scoops revealed in a new book co-authored by one of its anchors, Jake Tapper, and Alex Thompson of Axios.

Fox News has spent considerable time covering the book, but largely in the context of insisting that they were unlike the rest of the media; they have been all over the story, which is partially (mostly) true: they spent a ton of airtime focusing on embarrassing clips of Biden during the 2024 campaign. However, they did little in the way of the actual behind-the-scenes reporting, which is what Tapper and Thompson’s book, Original Sin, is packed with.

Regardless of your political views on Biden and aging, the revelations contained within the book are enormously newsworthy.

Yet MSNBC, one of the three major cable news networks, has barely mentioned the book or the shocking reporting contained within it: George Clooney claiming Biden didn’t recognize him at a celebrity fundraiser? According to network transcripts, it has been mentioned only once, and that was by Ali Vitali during the 5 a.m. hour. Biden officials considering using a wheelchair? Also, only mentioned by Vitali. Kamala Harris campaign manager David Plouffe saying Biden “totally fucked us” by staying in the race so late? Seemingly ignored. Credit where due: Katy Tur, Alex Witt, and Ayman Mohyeldin each have covered the book in one-off segments.

Biden official turned MSNBC host Symone Sanders also brought up the book on her Saturday show — but did so to ridicule its premise. “Did the book say that Joe Biden has dementia? No, not to my knowledge. Did the book say that a doctor has diagnosed the former president with Parkinson’s?” she asked.  “I think the book just says Joe Biden was old.”

She is correct that the book reports that Biden was old, among other shocking revelations about how checked out he was at the end of his time in office. It also argues that Biden’s insistence on running for re-election did more to ensure President Donald Trump’s second term than anything else. That’s the Original Sin laid out in the title: Biden’s refusal to relinquish power and belief that only he could protect the country from the threat of Trump ended up ensuring four more years of Trump.

The pushback from Sanders on this book is precisely the kind of comfort food many MSNBC viewers tune in for. But it also illustrates a serious problem the cable news network has created by hiring a raft of former Biden officials to be on-air talent. There is little incentive to cover a story that raises questions about your own complicity in the Biden cover-up. (And yes, this goes for all networks that hire former White House officials!)

There was a clear symbiosis between Team Biden, the DNC, and MSNBC. Not just in terms of hiring, but also messaging during the 2024 campaign. Take, for example, the leaked audio of Biden’s testimony to Special Counsel Robert Hur. Almost every news outlet covered it so viewers could hear for themselves that Hur’s characterizations of the then-president were accurate: he sounded remarkably old, confused, and feeble in his failed effort to recall not just the classified documents found in his garage, but also personal details like the death of his son Beau Biden.

That revelation puts MSNBC’s hosts in a tricky spot. Many spent an inordinate amount of time arguing that Hur showed significant bias by mentioning in his report that Biden sounded old and confused. Airing that audio would at best cause cognitive dissonance. At worst, it would expose serious flaws in the network’s coverage of Biden during the 2024 campaign.

The truth hurts for a network that went all-in trying to convince its viewers that Biden’s age wasn’t an issue. That issue was put in stark relief over the weekend by another development: On Sunday, tragic news broke of Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis, which led to a fascinating discussion on Morning Joe in which Dr. Zeke Emanuel argued that Biden had to have had that cancer for some time, suggesting either irresponsible management by White House physicians, or something much more sinister, like a cover-up.

Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski appeared gobsmacked by the notion that the Biden White House may have attempted to conceal this news — though, to be fair, both are friendly with Joe Biden, and so their reaction can understandably be taken in the context of the sad news that their friend has late-stage cancer.

Later in that same episode of Morning Joe, Axios editor Mike Allen was introduced to discuss the Hur tapes, which he explained perfectly well. He then pivoted to the national discussion about Biden’s decline and how the White House handled it, for which there was zero follow-up discussion. Brzezinski teased an upcoming interview with Tapper and Thompson and went on commercial break. So, at least we know they will discuss this on Wednesday — hopefully in some more detail.

It’s perhaps unfair to pick on Morning Joe because at least they’ve mentioned this story. According to a search of network transcripts, Nicolle Wallace, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, and, yes, former Biden Press Secretary Jen Psaki, do not appear to have mentioned the book once.

In hindsight, no one in the media who defended Biden’s acuity in the final year of his presidency looks good. But what MSNBC seems to be failing to understand is that this is not a case of picking on an elderly man for the sake of it. Democrats failed to keep Trump out of the White House, and much of the evidence we have for why stems from mistakes made by both the Biden administration and his decision to run again for re-election despite deep unpopularity and the vast majority of Americans believing he was simply too old.

It might be hard for MSNBC to be honest with its viewers — still shell-shocked by Trump’s win and only gradually returning to watch the news — about this political catastrophe. But refusing to do so only ensures the party and its supporters will never learn from their mistakes.

MSNBC has a Joe Biden problem. Ignoring it won’t make it go away.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.