On this week's "Press Club" podcast from Mediaite, MSNBC Morning Joe co-host Jon Lemire was quizzed on the "chaos" of Trump's first 100 days in office. But the amazing part came in discussing Biden's mental decline. Mediaite editor Aidan McLaughlin somehow didn't remember that Morning Joe Scarborough beclowned himself in 2024 with his "Best Biden Ever" speech!
I undersold him when I said he was cogent. He's far beyond cogent. In fact, I think he's better than he's ever been intellectually, analytically....
Start your tape right now, because I'm about to tell you the truth. And F-you if you can't handle the truth. This version of Biden intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever.
McLaughlin asked vaguely: "What do you make of this debate about the media’s handling of that story and whether or not it was complicit in a cover-up?"
Lemire protested: "I strongly push back against the idea that we were complicit in some sort of cover-up. I’ll speak for myself — at the time, I was at Politico as well as MSNBC. We wrote a lot of tough stories about where President Biden was, and questions Democrats had about his fitness for office."
This answer just begged for some quoting of Scarborough. Instead, Mediaite's editor just repeated himself: "Do you think the press could have been more aggressive in reporting it?"
Lemire gaslighted: "I think we were aggressive. Look, in any campaign, mistakes are made. I’ve covered a number of them at this point. There were mistakes made in our coverage in 2016 that have been well-documented. I’d like to think we did better in 2020, but it wasn’t perfect. We made mistakes in 2024 as well. But there were tough stories written by every outlet."
In addition, Lemire insisted the people around Biden who were shaming reporters about noticing reality, hey they were just professionals: "I think the Biden White House actively fought reporters on these stories. That’s not a cover-up — that’s just them trying to do their jobs."
McLaughlin also asked "How concerned are you by Trump’s attacks on the press?...Trump’s war on the press was more rhetoric in the first term. Now it’s action. Is that concerning to you?" Lemire replied:
He’s much more effective using the levers of power this time, effective and creative. We’ve seen that with law firms. We’ve seen that with universities. And we’re seeing it with a few media organizations. There’s a sense — there’s certainly a fear in the media industry that this is the beginning. That he hasn’t really spent much time on us yet — but it’s coming.
Right now, it’s been a few of the corporates — ABC, CBS, as you mentioned. We’ll see if there’s more. There was the nonsense with Politico and pulling government funding. But there may be a more organized attack on the media going forward. And then you add the smaller things — like policing language, knocking out the Associated Press from the pool because they refused to say “Gulf of America”, or installing new media seats.
Look, I’m a member of the White House Correspondents’ Association, and we’re all for growing our membership. Most, though not all, of the new occupants of that seat are certainly right-leaning outlets that cover the administration very positively. And then taking over the pool system as well. Presidents of both parties, for decades, left that alone, understanding the need for independent eyes and ears to represent the American public in places like the Oval Office, Air Force One, or on foreign trips. And we’ve seen the Trump team do away with that.
