The Bidens need to go away. But they can’t get enough of the limelight.
But now Jill Biden uttered one totally humiliating sentence she’ll never live down.
The 92NY Event, The Memoir Tour, And The Double Standard That Works Both Ways
The memoir tour continues. On Wednesday, Fox News Digital published video from Jill Biden’s June appearance at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, where she sat down with Whoopi Goldberg to discuss her book, A View from the East Wing, and inevitably the press coverage of her husband’s presidency.
Goldberg asked whether Biden believed the press had covered Joe’s four years fairly. It took a moment for the answer to come. “You know, I think probably, well, I mean, seeing how things are now, I don’t know,” she said. “I’d have to think about that.”
The honest uncertainty in that answer is the most interesting thing in the exchange. A former first lady who has spent months on a memoir tour insisting on the importance of transparency with the public pauses when asked directly whether the press did its job during her husband’s presidency. The hesitation speaks.
She arrived at a more definitive position: “You know, if Joe would have done any one of the things that are occurring now, I mean he would have been excoriated.” Goldberg said “oh yeah” with a chuckle that suggested complete agreement.
It is worth taking that claim seriously on its merits — because it contains a real observation buried inside a partisan one.
Where She’s Right — And Where The Logic Collapses
Jill Biden is correct that media coverage applies different standards to different presidents. The data on this is not seriously disputed. Studies of network news coverage consistently show that Trump receives substantially higher negative coverage than any predecessor, including Biden. Coverage of Biden’s cognitive decline — the story that was happening, in full view, for years — was systematically downplayed or dismissed as partisan by major media institutions until Jill Biden’s own memoir made it impossible to continue ignoring.
So yes: there is a double standard. But it does not operate the way she describes.
The double standard that afflicted Joe Biden’s presidency was a protective one. A press that had spent Trump’s first term amplifying every gaffe and stumble spent Biden’s presidency deliberately minimizing a cognitive deterioration that was ultimately documented — in Jill Biden’s own words — as something she feared was a stroke when she watched his June 2024 debate performance. The media that would have “excoriated” Trump for the same visible decline spent four years telling the American public that concern about Biden’s fitness was a Republican talking point.
Biden acknowledged that the White House could have done more to cultivate press relationships. “Maybe we could have done more to reach out to the press to be more open so that they understood us as real people and not sort of these figureheads. That’s one thing I do regret.” That regret is interesting coming from an administration whose communications strategy was built in large part around limiting Biden’s exposure to unscripted questions.
The ‘Excoriated’ Standard — Applied Honestly
“If Joe would have done any one of the things that are occurring now” — Trump’s Iran war, his executive orders, his relationship with the DOJ, his firing of officials — “he would have been excoriated.” Maybe. He was also protected from a level of scrutiny that would, under any fair application of the same standard, have questioned his fitness for office years before the June 2024 debate made it impossible to ignore.
The press standard Jill Biden is invoking cuts in all directions. A press willing to “excoriate” Democratic presidents with the same energy it applies to Trump might have asked harder questions about cognitive decline, about the mechanics of the 2024 pardon, about why the White House medical team apparently did not pursue the urologist referral that ultimately produced the stage 4 prostate cancer diagnosis. Those are not Republican attacks. They are questions the “double standard” she deplores would, if applied symmetrically, have produced.
She said she regrets that the administration didn’t form closer relationships with the press. The more accurate statement might be that she regrets the press relationships they did cultivate — ones that prioritized protection over accountability, and that eventually left both the president and his most devoted defender unable to answer honestly what everyone watching the debate already knew.
