A lesson (not) learned from President Biden's health scandal
When public trust is in a hole, stop digging!
The news that former President Biden is suffering from severe cancer is incredibly sad. I pray that he and his family can navigate what may well be the end of his life with some measure of comfort, and wish that we lived in a moral, sane country where such a diagnosis could be shared and grieved without caveats or further discussion.
Alas, we do not live in such a country.
Instead, we live with the reality that many, many people who should have known and done better went to extraordinary lengths to exploit President Biden’s decline, and repeatedly lied to the public about his condition for political reasons. That is why I actually screamed when I watched this obnoxious bit of scold artistry from House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries:
My thoughts and prayers have been extended to President Biden. It’s a painful moment for him and his family, it’s a very serious diagnosis…It seems to me entirely inappropriate that at this moment in time, when President Biden is dealing with a serious and aggressive form of cancer, that there are Republicans peddling conspiracy theories and want us to look backward…
SIR. Your entire Party has been caught with your pants down. Could you at least pull them up before scolding people for commenting on the color of y’all’s hole-riddled underwear?!
This is exactly why people become “conspiracy theorists.” This is why people “do their own research” and refuse to listen to anything public officials say anymore. Because when caught in a web of blatantly obvious lies, politicians like Rep. Jeffries choose to double down and insult people for noticing, instead of admitting they were wrong (or at least having enough shame to decline to comment until the next news cycle). Once again, we see evidence of the airtight echo chamber most progressive Democrats live within, that Jeffries and others pushing this “conspiracy theory” line feel they can speak like this and get away with it. It’s not a conspiracy “theory” when a bunch of people get caught in coordinated acts of deception — it’s just a conspiracy. Please, stop playing in our faces already!
The only thing we should be hearing from most legacy media outlets, virtually all Democrats, and especially members of the last administration is a long series of humble apologies for defrauding our country and denigrating anyone who dared to say something about it. These people rode a sick old man’s back for YEARS, clinging white-knuckle tight to the reins of misappropriated power. If you propagated or overlooked this sham and are still wonder-complaining about how we ended up with Trump, look around, then straight in a mirror. Because y’all refused to do the right thing at the right time, you left voters with a ridiculous choice. And when confronted with the choice of Trump versus a clearly incapacitated man who was then abruptly replaced by someone who actively participated in the attempted1 cover up, they chose the former. Unlike in 2016, 2024 voters had the ability to directly compare a Trump presidency with a Biden/Harris presidency. Dems’ insulting, blatant dishonesty made their anti-Trump arguments ring hollow for everyone outside of their groupthink bubble.
One of the main themes I focus on in my work with political comms clients is trust, because well-earned, widespread public mistrust is one of the biggest communications challenges we face right now. And again and again, we see examples of public officials continuing to destroy what little public trust remains by engaging in deflective, manipulative speech instead of being accountable. Accountability is an essential component of trust; it is the only way for imperfect people (aka all of us!) to maintain trustworthiness.
If nothing else, we can at least learn this lesson from the people torching the last remnants of their credibility right now: when you mess up, ‘fess up. The more you try to hide, or deflect attention to whomever you think is worse, the more reasons you give people to stop trusting you. And then you have no one else to blame but yourself when you have to deal with the fallout.
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Updated this to say “attempted cover up” because as Megyn Kelly rightfully points out, conservative and independent media covered this story extensively despite the willful ignorance of legacy media outlets. Her recent questioning of Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson on their failures to report on Biden’s decline and Democrats’ dishonesty before the election/their book deal was a masterful demonstration of how to respectfully yet forcefully challenge an evasive interviewee. Her past experience as an attorney really shines in this interview.