The BFD | Media Let Joe Keep on Truckin’

Oh dear, Joe Biden has had another “senior moment”. No, he’s not wandering, bewildered, around Cornwall, or forgetting why he even ran for president.

No, this time it’s another of his “grandpa moment” tall tales.

It’s harmless enough stuff – except that it tells us everything we need to know about the deplorable state of the mainstream media.

Career politician President Biden is being mocked for claiming he used to drive an 18-wheeler truck — with the White House only able to show he was once a passenger in one.

Sure, grandpa. Now tell us about how you used to live in a cardboard box, walk five miles to school, and have to fight Corn Pop’s gang every step of the way.

The 48-year political veteran made the claim while visiting a Mack Truck facility in Pennsylvania on Wednesday.

“I used to drive an 18-wheeler, man,” the 78-year-old commander-in-chief told staff, video of the exchange shows — with him clarifying that he “got to” drive one.

But challenged by Fox News to produce evidence, a White House spokesperson could only point to a December 1973 article from the Wilmington Evening Journal that showed Biden rode in an 18-wheeler, not that he drove one.

“There is zero evidence that Biden ‘used to drive an 18 wheeler,’” tweeted the Republican National Committee’s Zach Parkinson, along with images of the Wilmington paper’s story about Biden’s 536-mile ride.

“The extent of Biden’s trucking experience is that he rode in a truck once, for one night in 1973,” Parkinson wrote.

“(He made sure to return home by plane though),” he added, highlighting that part of the story.

As I’ve written before, there are three types of liars: liars, damned liars, and bullshit artists.

All politicians are liars. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are damned liars: Clinton, because he lied nearly every time he opened his mouth, and Obama because his lies are damnably strategic and colossal.
Donald Trump and, yes, Hillary Clinton, are bullshit artists. Hillary makes absurd claims that are easily disprovable, because she apparently wants to believe them.

Trump, like Hillary, gets carried away and makes exaggerated claims, too. They are bullshit artists, not so much from malice, but because they can’t help exaggerating. More importantly, the Donald can’t stop being a salesman. Even he admits it: he can’t just say something is great, he has to say it’s the best, the biggest, the most amazing there’s ever been.

Biden is a bullshit artist too. Worse, he’s a bullshit artist in cognitive decline. His lies are not just absurd, they’re barely intelligible (does anyone even understand what the point of his “hairy legs” story even was?).

But what really matters here is how the press reacts.

“Truck driver, coal miner, it’s all just nonsense Biden makes up because he thinks reporters won’t call him on it,” Parkinson claimed.

When Fox News again pressed the White House that riding in a truck is not the same as being behind the wheel, a spokesperson pointed to a United Federation of Teachers post that said Biden drove a school bus in the past as a summer job, the outlet said[…]

Biden has been accused of other flubs over his past, including that he “got started out of a HBCU, Delaware State” — which the historically black college denied.

New York Post

Can you imagine if Trump had made the same claims?

Politico would have published a 5,000-word “Fact Check”. Snopes would have posted detailed diagrams of school buses, showing how they have six wheels at most. The New York Times would have screamed about Russian-made Kamaz trucks. CNN and Buzzfeed would still be gibbering that the Bad Orange Man only went to HBCU to burn crosses on the lawns.

And that’s the real issue: the mainstream media have stopped even pretending to be anything other than bought-and-paid-for propaganda hacks. After four years of ceaselessly screaming about “TRUMP’s FIVE MILLION-BILLION-TRILLION LIES!”, they’re openly admitting that they’re not even bothering to count Joe Biden’s lies.

Joe Biden is a doddering bullshit artist. He can’t really be blamed for telling ludicrous untruths.

But the media absolutely can and must be held to account for their deliberate and non-stop lies.