Joe Biden’s mental acuity is the real lie of the year, not pet-eating migrants | Opinion
This week PolitiFact.org announced its “Lie of the Year” and boy it is a doozy. If you blinked during the campaign, you might have missed it. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance alleged that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating their neighbors’ dogs and cats. The controversy lasted about a hot minute and then the Trump campaign was on to its next inconsequential fabrication.
Because really there is no contest for “Lie of the Year” by any sane standard. You remember the real lie of the year, right?
The assertion that Joe Biden is as sharp as a tack.
“Anyone who would think that they’re at some advantage because of (Biden’s) age thinks that at their peril, because he’s very sharp,” said Nancy Pelosi, before also saying that she had worked with the president for a very long time and that Biden was “on the ball.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said much the same thing. ““I talk to President Biden regularly. Usually several times in a week.” Schumer told reporters. “His mental acuity is great, it’s fine, it’s as good as it’s been over the years.”
Vice President Kamala Harris agreed, saying “Our president is in good shape, in good health, and is ready to lead in our second term.”
And when journalists raised questions about Biden’s fitness, they got attacked. When the Wall Street Journal reported that Biden was losing a step, Pelosi erupted on X: “Many of us spent time with @WSJ to share on the record our first-hand experiences with @POTUS, where we see his wisdom, experience, strength and strategic thinking,” Pelosi wrote. “Instead, the Journal ignored testimony by Democrats, focused on attacks by Republicans and printed a hit piece.”
And then Biden showed up at a prime time debate with Donald Trump and the lie that involved top White House aides, top Congressional Democrats, fundraisers, activists and political insiders from across the country came tumbling down. Biden’s performance was, well, not “very sharp,” showing “mental acuity” that was not so “great”. At the end of two hours, Biden was not in “good shape” at all.
And the rest is history. Within days, the very people who were telling us how sharp Biden was were privately pressuring him to drop out of the race.
Then, for the first time in American history, a presidential candidate withdrew from the election after winning the primaries without opposition. For the first time in American history, America had a Black, Asian woman as its Democratic presidential candidate. And Kamala Harris would go on to be beaten by Trump, who performed a political feat of returning to the presidency for a second non-consecutive term for the first time in more than a century.
It was the lie that rewrote our history books and turned America’s politics upside down. PolitiFact’s editor told me that they only check verifiable lies. OK.
But lies come in all shapes and sizes. This one was clearly the biggest and most consequential of the year. It was spread across all platforms from podcasts and talk radio to TV news and chat shows and newspapers and magazines alike.
Donald Trump and his acolytes spew such a blizzard of falsehoods that I never would have imagined the day when Democrats would beat him in the contest to tell the biggest whopper. It is unfortunate that every time Trump and his chaos Cabinet tell another one, they can point back to the biggest one of 2024, and say the Democrats are just as bad.
This story was originally published December 20, 2024 at 7:46 AM with the headline "Joe Biden’s mental acuity is the real lie of the year, not pet-eating migrants | Opinion."
