Surprise! NYT’s Peter Baker Not Impressed With Hur-Biden Tape — Or With Axios for Publishing It

MSNBC analyst and chief White House Correspondent for The New York Times Peter Baker on Saturday threw shade in every direction when talking about the audio released Friday of the interview between then-special counsel Robert Hur and then-president Joe Biden.

The audio shows that Hur — who was smeared by many in the media and among Democrats as being some sort of secret admirer or operative of Donald Trump — was in no way exaggerating when he described the former president’s performance as that of a forgetful old man.

Indeed, the 2023 interview clearly shows that the frail figure Biden cut in the now-infamous, campaign ending debate with Trump was present long before that fateful night.

This rightly raises questions not just about the ways in which Democrats covered-up the problems Biden was facing, but to what extent the media turned a blind-eye … or actively helped.

Now, while some even on the left are expressing justifiable outrage at the massive deception on someone’s part, the media’s involvement is hardly questioned at all in the media, despite the book out now from Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson which at the very least suggests incuriosity or failure to notice things among American mainstream journalists during the time that American voters were definitely noticing them.

Baker, himself a White House correspondent mind you, never broke any news about Biden’s age. He contributed to a wishy-washy article at the NYT last year covering some “they said, they said” over Biden’s competence that ultimately left the reader with the conclusion that “sure, he’s old, but also, not that though.”

He and Yale professor Natasha Sarin spoke with MSNBC’s Alex Witt on Saturday, and briefly touched on the subject to equally underwhelming effect.

Witt introduced the subject not with a question about what Baker knew as a White House correspondent, or what he did or does believe about Biden’s competence then or now. Instead, the MSNBC host opened by saying, with a full SMH tone of voice, “Why release the full audio now? I mean, it’s after the fact. And do we know how Axios got the tapes?”

Baker, who, again, is a White House correspondent, offered implied criticism of Axios for the distasteful accepting of the audio tapes from the Trump administration, gave some verbal side-eye to Tapper and Thompson, and said the audio of an American president which not only exonerates Hur but gives a living voice to the ongoing process of exposing the cover-up — of that significant piece of historic audio, Baker said it’s only obvious purpose is to “embarrass” Biden.

He generously allowed a moment later that hearing the audio does have some limited value in that it helps to explain why Biden didn’t have to face any charges as a result of Hur’s investigation.

On Sunday, the news broke about the former president’s tragic diagnosis of prostate cancer. That terrible news has resulted in some suggesting the questions about Biden’s age and any cover-up now lie dormant out of respect for the situation. Many on the MAGA right struck a different, uglier note.

It would be tempting to say here that regardless of hardship and tragedy striking, the actions taken by the previous administration have raised enough questions that the issue won’t soon go away.

But then again, it would’ve been tempting many times in 2023 and 2024 after hearing some sporadic conversation and reporting about his age and questions of his acuity that it wouldn’t go away then, either. But…

There is a habit in media to lose interest, one might conclude, when the subject isn’t Donald Trump.

WITT: Why release the full audio now? I mean, it’s after the fact. And do we know how Axios got the tapes?

BAKER: Well, the Trump administration decided to put it out, and they decided to take advantage of this news cycle because the new book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson is coming out next week about Biden’s physical and mental decline in office.

WITT: Hang on, Peter, you’re saying the Trump administration gave it to Axios.

BAKER: Well, I don’t know about Axios’s sources, but I think it’s very clear they’re the ones who had access to it, and they have told our reporters that they planned to put it out there. So, you know, the idea that it went to Axios first is not surprising, I suppose.

But they’ve already made the decision, they wanted to put it out there. The president himself has said he wanted this tape out there. Why does he want it out there? Obviously he wants to embarrass his predecessor and undercut President Biden even further.

We’ve had the transcript of this, we know the answers that were given or not given. We know that he struggled with memory lapses during this conversation. But obviously hearing the tape is a different thing. It does emphasize and underscore just how much trouble he had in that interview and why Robert Hur, the special counsel decided not to bring charges. Remember, Robert Hur said that he decided not to bring charges in part because the president seemed like a forgetful old man. And that that would be hard to convince a jury that he knowingly violated the law. Well, how did he make that determination? He made it in part through this interview that we’re now hearing. Through this audio tape.

And therefore, hearing the audio tape does have a value in that sense to help us understand, uh, what Hur was evaluating.

Watch the clip above via MSNBC.

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