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All week, we’ve seen the media asking themselves why they didn’t make President Joe Biden’s mental acuity a bigger story before that debate that went so badly that the New York Times editorial board asked Biden to step down. CNN’s Hadas Gold wrote a piece saying that “it’s complicated” why the media didn’t cover the story more thoroughly. One reason is because it was being amplified by right-wing media, “which may have inadvertently turned off any serious investigation.”

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A few reporters are stepping forward and saying, “Hey, wait. I wrote about it.” This editor did a post on the New York Times catching hell for writing a generic story about the 80-year-old brain. The Daily Beast was a little less subtle, publishing a piece headlined, “Biden is old. Get used to it.”

Olivia Nuzzi has a piece in New York Magazine about “the conspiracy of silence” to deflect from Biden’s mental decline.

She writes:

In January, I began hearing similar stories from Democratic officials, activists, and donors. All people who supported the president and were working to help reelect him to a second term in office. Following encounters with the president, they had arrived at the same concern: Could he really do this for another four years? Could he even make it to Election Day?

When they discussed what they knew, what they had seen, what they had heard, they literally whispered. They were scared and horrified. But they were also burdened. They needed to talk about it (though not on the record). They needed to know that they were not alone and not crazy. Things were bad, and they knew things were bad, and they knew others must also know things were bad, and yet they would need to pretend, outwardly, that things were fine. The president was fine. The election would be fine. They would be fine. To admit otherwise would mean jeopardizing the future of the country and, well, nobody wanted to be responsible personally or socially for that. Their disclosures often followed innocent questions: Have you seen the president lately? How does he seem? Often, they would answer with only silence, their eyes widening cartoonishly, their heads shaking back and forth. Or with disapproving sounds. “Phhhhwwwaahhh.” “Uggghhhhhhhhh.” “Bbbwwhhheeuuw.” Or with a simple, “Not good! Not good!” Or with an accusatory question of their own: “Have you seen him?!”

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… an idea that they had previously dismissed as right-wing propaganda: The president may not really be the acting president after all.

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Today, it seems. Is Nuzzi saying she was part of the conspiracy to cover up Biden’s mental decline?

The memo went out to the media that it was OK to write about Biden’s mental acuity. The DNC was probably trying to force him out by shopping the story to all the mainstream outlets.

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