MSNBC Ignores Bombshell NBC News Report About Biden’s False Attack on Special Counsel

For several days after Special Counsel Robert Hur released his report on his investigation into President Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified information, MSNBC could hardly stop talking about it.

According to the special counsel, Biden “did not remember when he was vice president,” asking his interlocutors if he was “still” vice president in 2009, the year he was sworn into the office, and 2013, when he began his second term. He also reportedly failed to recall “even within several years, when his son Beau died.”

The implications about Biden’s mental state in Hur’s report raised serious questions about Biden’s ability to continue serving as commander-in-chief, inflaming concerns a majority of the American people already had.

Naturally, much of the MSNBC fleet rushed to his defense.

Ari Melber insisted that Hur had “snuck” some “ageism” into the document and chalked Biden’s misremembering of topline biographical details about himself to a legal strategy.

Chris Hayes suggested that Hur had included the anecdotes because he was “frustrated” that he had not come up with enough to prosecute Biden.

Joe Scarborough declared that Hur was a “Trumper” who had produced a “garbage” report with “gratuitous” information in it.

John Heilemann defended Biden by professing to hardly remember who won the Super Bowl less than 48 hours after it ended.

Douglas Brinkley told Chris Jansing that Hur’s reference to Beau Biden was “beyond the pale.”

Jennifer Palmieri argued that there was “no legitimate” reason for Hur to ask about the president’s late son.

The president himself also expressed outrage over the inclusion of his son’s name in the report.

“Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn’t any of their damn business,” said Biden at a press conference held on Thursday night.

One might think, given the amount of airtime devoted to defending Biden and attacking Hur, that a bombshell report refuting Biden’s version of events might merit mention on the network.

And yet nearly 24 hours after MSNBC’s own sister organization, NBC News, reported that it was Biden, not Hur, who brought up his son during their interview, MSNBC has yet to address just such a report on air.

From NBC’s story:

“How in the hell dare he raise that?” Biden told reporters in an impromptu White House press conference. “Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn’t any of their damn business.”

But Hur never asked that question, according to two people familiar with Hur’s five-hour interview with the president over two days last October. It was the president, not Hur or his team, who first introduced Beau Biden’s death, they said.

Biden raised his son’s death after being asked about his workflow at a Virginia rental home from 2016 to 2018, the sources said, when a ghost writer was helping him write a memoir about losing Beau to brain cancer in 2015. Investigators had a 2017 recording showing that Biden had told the ghost writer he had found “classified stuff” in that home, the report says.

Biden began trying to recall that period by discussing what else was happening in his life, and it was at that point in the interview that he appeared confused about when Beau had died, the sources said. Biden got the date—May 30—correct, but not the year.

This is an enormous revelation. The president either intentionally misled the American people in an effort to distract them from the damning details included in Hur’s report or his memory failed him yet again even as he was trying to prove his mental acuity.

Could a network with any respect at all for its audience reasonably deprive it of this information, particularly after spending so much time and effort promoting what turned out to be a false narrative? Especially considering the fact that the reporting came from inside its own building?

Of course not, but MSNBC could and did.

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