In a disappointing but predictable fashion, the mainstream media is running interference for President Joe Biden. Last week’s scathing special counsel report detailing his obvious mental decline is being duly mocked by leftist talking heads.

The same pundits who, for the record, gave unqualified diagnoses just a few years prior for former President Donald Trump. 

The special report specifically described the Democrat as an “elderly man with a poor memory.” Initial media accounts reported the facts presented by the counsel as well as Biden’s latest gaffes.

But the White House responded swiftly with declarations of the president’s youth and vigor. This set “journalists” on a quite different path, and the narrative shifted dramatically.

Special Counsel Robert Hur was sharply criticized, and simultaneously Biden’s age suddenly became his “superpower.”

CBS News quoted Massachusetts General Hospital neurologist Bruce Price explaining that forgetting names does not indicate a serious cognitive problem. Instead, he claimed “it’s probably a sign of being in overwhelm,” of the president having “10 balls in the air at any given moment.”

After a special counsel found Biden "willfully retained and disclosed classified materials" and called him an "elderly man with a poor memory," Biden held a brief — but angry and incoherent — press conference.

It did not go well, so we're sharing it in its entirety: pic.twitter.com/ncstumQj13

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 9, 2024

Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara called the details released by the special counsel “gratuitous, superfluous statements.”

She claimed that “in the context in which you appointed special counsel to be above politics and away from politics he’s provided political grist to the opponents of Joe Biden, as a matter of politics.”

Former President Donald Trump was hardly afforded such respect, from while he was still a candidate and even in the early years of his presidency.

Note the Atlantic headline dated July 20, 2016: “Donald Trump: Sociopath?” The Washington Post asked on Sept. 22, 2017, “Is Trump mentally ill? Or is America? Psychiatrists weigh in.”

Just weeks later it was New Yorker’s turn to question the 45th president’s mental acuity. And the outlet enlisted a swarm of supposed medical professionals to question Trump’s fitness to hold office.

The piece was titled, “How Anti-Trump Psychiatrists are Mobilizing Behind the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.” It cited the group Duty to Warn and its claims that the president “suffers from an incurable malignant narcissism that makes him incapable of carrying out his presidential duties.”

This reporting was fine, but to the mainstream press, the state of Biden’s mental wellbeing is off limits.