The fiction that Joe Biden is a selfless, honorable public servant — long undermined by his own deeds — collapsed in on itself Sunday night.
As did the credibility of his longtime allies in the Fourth Estate who helped write it.
For well over a year now, the president and his surrogates have indignantly insisted that he would not pardon his son, Hunter.
And because Biden is a Democrat, he enjoyed not only the benefit of the doubt from America’s journalists, but preemptive praise from them.
S.E. Cupp marveled that “the contrast” between Biden and Donald Trump — who protested the politically-motivated zombie case brought against him by Alvin Bragg — was “profound.”
Andrew Weissmann declared that Biden was “living what it means to have rule of law in this country.”
Legal commentator Neal Katyal said he knew “no other word” for Biden’s decision other than “presidential.”
Chris Whipple, the author of a book about the Biden White House, called his choice “extraordinary” and stood in awe of his “moral clarity.”
Biden biographer Evan Osnos expounded on his subject’s “old-school” conception of his duty and agitation at “abuses of power.”
And when a Republican strategist had the gall — nay, the temerity — to suggest that Biden would go back on his word, CNN’s Abby Phillip informed him, with no shortage of annoyance in her tone, that the president had “ruled out” a pardon for Hunter.
So much for all that.
On Sunday, Biden announced that he had pardoned his progeny not just for the gun and tax crimes he committed, but for any and all illegal conduct over the course of the last decade.
Asked about the reversal on Monday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that Biden had determined that “war politics” had “infected the process.”
If you’re wondering what she actually means by that, the answer is nothing.
It’s obfuscatory jargon, not a credible explanation.
America’s journalists tell themselves a story about their profession in order to move product and feed their egos.
According to that story, they are the guardians of capital-D Democracy, the ones best positioned and most willing to speak truth to power.
It’s little more than a narcissistic myth.
When it’s Democrats who wield it, most in the press regard their job not as standing up to power, but protecting it.
It’s only when Republicans are at the helm that they suddenly activate the cynical gene that should motivate every journalist worth their salt.
The media was complicit in Biden’s lies about The Post’s accurate reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop on the eve of the 2020 election.
The media was complicit in covering up Biden’s rapidly deteriorating condition.
And it was complicit in cultivating an image of a noble, publicly-minded Joe Biden that never existed.
During Trump’s first term, journalists warned that “democracy in darkness.”
On the campaign trail, Biden promised to “restore the soul” of the country.
All of this haughty talk was the product of the delusions of grandeur that haunt America’s progressive establishment.
Their preposterous self-conception as the champions of all that is good and right — as well as their castigation of their opponents as all that is evil and wrong — compels some of them to lie and renders the rest of them blind to truths that strike the rest of us as self-evident.
Now, though, with the curtain closing on his failed presidency and lamentable political career, there is one truth too stark to deny.
Joe Biden has destroyed not just his own legacy, but that of those who went to bat for him.
By Isaac Schorr
