In some respects, President Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in Thursday’s presidential debate gave establishment media figures exactly what they wanted.
For instance, Biden’s weak and confused-sounding remarks allowed prominent establishment propagandists such as Bill Maher and Chris Matthews to distance themselves from the president and thus behave as if their complicity in spreading establishment lies did not make the Biden debacle possible in the first place.
“Now I don’t want to show a lot of the tape from last night because it’s too hard to look at,” Maher said at the beginning of a nearly two-minute clip from Friday’s episode of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” posted to the social media platform X.
Then, after the audience laughter subsided, Maher rolled a clip of Biden saying something incoherent about COVID and Medicare.
Approximately ten seconds into the 26-second debate clip, former President Donald Trump twice turned his head in Biden’s direction as the president stumbled over his nonsensical words.
Matthews, a former MSNBC host appearing on Maher’s show Friday, then commented on the timing of Trump’s head turn.
“He wanted to have his head turned and like, ‘Let’s watch the guy show how crazy he is,” Matthews said, marveling at what he called Trump’s “theatrical ability.”
“OK, but he didn’t have to do anything,” Maher said of Trump.
“It reminded me of when Mike Tyson used to knock guys out in 90 seconds. That was, like, two minutes into the debate, and I went, ‘Oh, this election is over.’ I mean, that was, like, a haymaker right aw–,” the host added before Matthews interrupted him.
Do you think Biden is mentally ill?
“Look, I’ve watched the guy. He is so fast on the trigger,” the former MSNBC host said of Trump’s debating skills.
None of this means, however, that either Maher or Matthews has seen the error of his ways.
In fact, having praised Trump’s skills, Matthews proceeded to accuse the former president of mixing lies with truth.
Then came a possible Freudian slip.
“Obama — I’m sorry — Biden is not smart enough to keep up with him,” Matthews claimed.
Maher agreed.
“Isn’t that the whole point? You need a guy to keep up with him,” the host said.
Bill Maher says that Trump’s debate performance reminded him of when ‘Mike Tyson used to knock guys out in 90 seconds. This election is over’:
CM: “You see the head, the way he turned that head? Let’s watch the guy and show how crazy he is. He’s looking for it.”
BM: “You’re… pic.twitter.com/aUoUuiIRkv— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) June 29, 2024
There you have it. The problem, Maher and Matthews agreed, is not that establishment politicians such as Biden have done nothing but lie to Americans for years, nor that Maher and Matthews themselves lie each time they repeat establishment talking points, but that Trump lies, so what they really need is someone to “keep up with” Trump, which presumably means calling out the former president on his alleged lies.
In other words, Democrats and the anti-Trump establishment face not a spiritual problem but merely a practical one. To Maher and Matthews, Biden amounts to an optics-related challenge rather than an instrument of a decayed regime.
In fairness, Maher does have anti-woke credentials. But he has also shown that he believes the main lines of the establishment’s fraudulent anti-Trump narrative.
Imagine complaints about truth coming from two representatives of an establishment media that pushed the Russia collusion hoax, the “fine people” hoax and recently the “bloodbath” hoax; that used COVID-related lies to justify authoritarianism; that denied any connection between mail-in ballots and the voter fraud they abet; that mindlessly — and on orders from the deep state — referred to the unarmed Capitol incursion of Jan. 6, 2021, as an “insurrection” ; that told Americans the catastrophic war in Ukraine had something to do with democracy, and so forth.
Biden’s struggles allowed them to ignore all that. Remember, the demented president is the problem, not those who have enabled him.
