The Mainstream Media’s Everlasting Love Affair With Joe Biden

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen, for the Daily Signal. I’d like to look at Joe Biden’s speech, if I could, for a moment. It was billed as his first post-presidential speech. He gave it in Chicago, to an activist group that is trying to support and help people who are disabled. It may or may not have actually been his first public speech, but it was billed as such.

But my interest is this: I watched it twice and then I compared the coverage in The Wall Street Journal. If you watch the speech, it’s, to tell you the truth, quite embarrassing. And that is why some former Biden aides said that they cringe to see how Joe Biden has descended into confusion and chaos.

He walked out to the podium when there was entry music, and then he began to speak for 15 or 20 seconds while the music was going on. No one could hear him, and yet, he didn’t stop. Nobody said, “Joe, we can’t hear you. You’re speaking. That was the introductory music.” Then he continued.

Traditionally—at least in the first year—an ex-president does not attack his successor.

He immediately went into a harangue about Donald Trump. And he did it in his typical style. That is, it’s a projectionist mode, where, as many people on the Left, if they are guilty of something, they project that onto a target. So, he was a full Snagglepuss—Snarly-puss. He was angry.

And, he said, “and he’s gonna cut Social Security, Donald Trump. And he’s—we’ve never been—but—we need unity.”

So, in other words, the man, who at one point called half the country, Donald Trump’s supporters, “garbage.” And has called them semi-fascist, ultra MAGA. And earlier during campaigns, he’d called them chumps and drags. He was now saying that Donald Trump was divisive, and he was calling for unity, while he was angry. As Biden is, often.

Then he went in and said that Donald Trump is going to destroy Social Security. Trump has promised, ad infinitum, he is not going to touch Social Security. What he did say was he’s going in with the DOGE auditors to see, for example, why thousands of people who were born before 1920 are still on the Social Security roles. Are they getting money? Are they dead? Are they alive? Are people 90, 100, 110? That’s something that’s interesting.

And then, finally, Joe Biden said, “When I was young and I saw a bus of colored kids…” “Colored kids.” That’s a term that nobody uses. It’s considered offensive. And it’s consistent with what Joe Biden has said as president. He called two of his important aides who were African American, “boys.” I think he referred to Satchel Paige, the great pitcher, at one point, as “colored.”

Remember in the Obama primary of 2008 he said Obama was the first “clean” and “articulate” black. He bragged that Delaware had been a “slave state,” as if he was acquainted, then, with African American’s issues.

I could go on—”put you all in chains.” So, it was a disastrous point. But my point is this: The Wall Street Journal headline was that he attacks Trump. Accuses him of cutting Social Security. And the article said that Biden looked rested.

That was just a complete distortion. And when you start looking every single day, as I’m doing, if it’s tariffs, it’s a disaster. If it’s DOGE, it’s a disaster. If it’s Ukraine, Trump is doing something wrong, he’s favored Putin too much. It’s a disaster.

Everything. If it’s the mistakenly deported Mr. Garcia, there’s no background about who Mr. Garcia really is. It’s a disaster. Almost every article—it’s like an itch or a twitch—is negative, negative, negative, negative. The news division makes the headlines—but the columnists now—and I like many of them and so do you—but they’re pretty much negative.

They can’t find a good thing to say. But yet, when we look at the first hundred days, as we’re going talk about in a later video: Border? Good. Effort to stop the Ukraine War? Admirable. Middle East? Iran has got its back against the wall. Energy? All these things are good. There’s nothing there. Why are they doing this?

I’ll just finish with this observation. I wrote 20 years for the National Review magazine. And they got into the same frame. They were obsessed with Donald Trump and felt that he had been a disaster. This was in 2015 and ’16, ’17. They got obsessed with it. And before they knew it, they were criticizing him for positions they had once held.

I hope The Wall Street Journal doesn’t get into that frame of mind. The New York Post, which is also a Murdoch venue, has not It’s been pretty objective. But something’s going on at The Wall Street Journal. And I fear that it’s going to lose them thousands of subscribers.