Biden’s Ratings Tank: Media Shocked Americans Don’t Buy Their Fairy Tales

Transcript from Glenn Greenwald:

One of the things that you would have thought the 2016 election demonstrated or proved to the corporate media, or at least prompted a lot of self-reflection, was just how completely removed and out of touch and separate they are from the ordinary voter. The entire media essentially was united in support of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and against Donald Trump’s campaign. They did everything possible to sabotage that campaign, including drowning the country in yet another disinformation campaign – not the laptop disinformation campaign that was 2020 – but the Russiagate disinformation campaign that came from the FBI and the CIA, an attempt to sabotage Donald Trump’s candidacy that they did fear because of the ideology, views and policies he was advocating.

Throughout the year, they insisted that there had never been a candidate as dangerous as Donald Trump. Every newsroom was absolutely certain that Hillary Clinton was not only going to be the winner of that election but also win by a very comfortable margin. None of that happened. Voters had very different priorities than people who are ensconced in studios in Washington and New York and working with large contracts from major media corporations.

Surprise, surprise, people who are far less economically well-off or who live in different places or have different values, don’t actually feel represented by the media that, say, 50 or 60 years ago, they felt very represented by and that actually tried to support all sectors of American life. That’s no longer the case. Everything is segregated. Liberal outlets, which aren’t most in the corporate media, know that they’re speaking only to liberals. That’s their business model. It’s their political activist model. And so, when they drone on and on and on, they’re mostly speaking to people who already are on their side, and it changes nothing.

Here we are in 2024 and I don’t need to tell you everything the media has been saying and doing to convince Americans, yet again, that Donald Trump is not just a bad president, but basically a Hitlerian figure, a major threat to American democracy. It’s something we hear over and over and over. As I mentioned, they were quite certain that convicting Donald Trump on any felony, no matter what it was, would basically sabotage and doom his candidacy and at the same time ensure Joe Biden’s reelection.

And yet, lo and behold, from FiveThirtyEight, the site that Nate Silver founded that analyzes and aggregates polling data, here you see that Joe Biden’s approval rating is currently at its lowest ever rate.

This is from February 2023 and throughout 2023 into 2024. His disapproval rating is now 56.6%, while his approval rating is 37.6%. And this comes in the wake of an onslaught by the corporate media to glorify Joe Biden’s presidency, to convince Americans that their belief that they’re struggling economically is misplaced and baseless.

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard or seen journalists who work for cable outlets or other major media corporations who have multimillion-dollar contracts as their annual salary, who have large homes in which they live, paid off along with their summer homes in the Hamptons or in Georgetown, where they live, and then in Martha’s Vineyard, tell everybody the economy is doing very, very well. It’s you Americans out there who think that you’re economically struggling and don’t understand the data. You should not be angry at Joe Biden. You should be grateful because of how good your lives are. And then they’re shocked when Joe Biden’s approval ratings continue to plummet. It is a reflection not only of how little in common they have with the people who they think they are lecturing and directing and leading but also just how incapable they are of understanding the priorities of American voters because they’re completely different from these media figures, for obvious reasons, that if you’re very wealthy, if you’re making a lot of money, your concern for the economy is much less. Your belief that the economy is doing very well is much higher because the economy actually is doing well for you, which doesn’t mean it’s doing well for everybody else.

The other aspect, obviously, and we’ve seen this in polling data over and over and over and over, is that one of the main reasons the American public does not trust Joe Biden and does not want to vote for him for a second term is the obviously well-grounded belief that Biden, who is now 81, already the oldest American president ever to serve in that office, is trying to run for a second term, which will bring him to the age of 85 at the end of that term. Everyone can see in plain sight that he is rapidly deteriorating cognitively and in every other way as a result of age. One of the reasons why American voters are so impervious to being gaslit and told that what they’re seeing is not the truth is because this is one of the areas in which Americans have a lot of confidence in their own ability to judge, they don’t need experts to help guide them through that. That’s because most of us have had the experience – I know I have and most people I know have – of having loved ones or family members who get very old, in their 80s and 90s, deteriorate in every way, cognitively and physically. And we can recognize it. We don’t need journalists to tell us whether it’s true. We can see it for ourselves. Just that video clip I showed you from Biden in 1991 shows he’s a completely different individual.

And yet, I want to show you just a clip that I found so amazing. There was recently a Wall Street Journal article that was headlined “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping.” And it quoted a lot of Democrats, although none of them, because they’re cowards, would go on the record talking about how in meetings it’s actually embarrassing, he sometimes rambles and no one has any idea what he’s saying. They’re talking about matters of war and peace or economic policy or the debt ceiling or agreements and he just starts rambling, and there’s a very soft voice that almost nobody can hear. Half the time he’s reading from note cards that are the most basic and elementary points that everybody already understands and agrees with, and that has nothing to do with the negotiation. And for a long period of time, he’ll just close his eyes and check out. Or when it’s time for him to speak, there will just be dead silence for 30 seconds. Even Democrats are saying how uncomfortable it is, how visible it is that we’re all seeing the same thing in public.

The White House has been trying to say, oh, don’t worry, in private, he’s this very sharp, robust leader, even if you don’t see it in public. So, the Wall Street Journal was deeply reported, but the only ones who would go on record were Republicans, even though a lot of Democrats were saying the same thing.

Here’s how Joe Scarborough, who let’s remember, was a Republican his entire life. In 1994, he was elected to Congress as part of the anti-establishment, conservative backlash led by Newt Gingrich. He was one of those congressmen, and now he has a multimillion-dollar contract with MSNBC. And he knows that to keep that, he has to essentially engage in anti-Trump propaganda every day, which he does. But here is Joe Scarborough, trying to convince people that not only is Joe Biden not suffering cognitive decline, but he is essentially sharper, more analytically sophisticated and more tuned to complex issues in economics and foreign policy than almost anybody else in Washington. Just listen to this.

(Video. Morning Joe. June 9, 2024)

MB: […] When Biden was negotiating with House Republicans to lift the debt ceiling, his demeanor and command of the details seemed to shift from one day to the next, according to then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy,

Joe Scarborough: […] people around Mike Johnson and the senator admit that this was basically House Republicans whacking.

MB: Why didn’t they just ask Marjorie Taylor Greene?

Joe Scarborough: Exactly. Why? Yeah. They could […]

MB: And Lauren Boebert

Joe Scarborough: It’s it it’s really shocking, especially when you see what Kevin McCarthy has said repeatedly, publicly and behind the scenes, about Biden, on those same days when they were negotiating,

MB: The strong feelings you’re seeing about this article comes also because the context of this race and these two candidates… It’s interesting. That’s all I’ll say. Anyhow, that flies in the face of what McCarthy said about Biden’s effectiveness in the past. From Politico last year, quote, “McCarthy mocked Biden’s age and mental acuity in public.” […]

Joe Scarborough: In public, like he did in this article.

MB: […] “While privately telling allies that he found the president sharp and substantive in their conversations – a contradiction that left a deep impression on the White House.” This is from the New York Times: “Privately, Mr. McCarthy has told allies that he has found Mr. Biden to be mentally sharp in meetings.”

And Joe Scarborough rather went on a five-minute rant about how he has known how speakers met with House speakers for over 30 years, and that the current Joe Biden puts every one of them to shame, including Kevin McCarthy, when it comes to his mental acuity, his ability to understand and make strong, reasoned decisions on complex matters… I mean, this is North Korea-level-style propaganda. This is the sort of thing that anybody with a minimal amount of shame would refuse to do. But these partisan outlets have none of that shame. I mean, they’re counting on trying to tell the American people that what they’re seeing, they should not believe, they should not trust their own lying eyes. I mean, that is the only strategy and every day you see new images of Biden shuffling, that kind of very slow shuffle, representing just a complete kind of gradual shutdown of the human organism, of the body, which obviously includes the brain as well. You can see him, half the time, with no idea where he is, no idea where he’s supposed to go, looking extremely confused.

And yet, Democrats, wealthy, out-of-touch Democrats, really believe that what people are going to vote on are things like Trump’s conviction in a Manhattan courtroom, in what they probably perceive to be nothing more than a private matter of infidelity, something that during the Clinton years they proved they really don’t care about. What they want in their political leaders are people who are going to make their lives materially better. They have a positive recollection of the Trump economy, before COVID, and they feel they’re economically struggling under Biden. And yet the kind of people who are reading Democrats and telling them what it is that they should say are people like Alexander Soros.

If you can find a person who has less in common with almost every other American, let alone average Americans in swing states, than Alexander Soros, I’d like to find out who that is. He was not only born into multi-billionaire wealth that he did not earn, though inherited, but every single thing that Alexander Soros has done in his life – everything that he is – is the exclusive byproduct of genetic luck, of having been born to somebody who actually compiled a massive fortune, regardless of how they did that.

Alexander Soros didn’t try to go into another field to prove that he was capable. He just followed his father around and he inherited the Open Society Foundation that his father runs, and the way that he exercises political control with billions of dollars, and even that alone. Imagine the Open Society is a big foundation with huge numbers of employees. Do you think George Soros’s son just happens to be the best person, the most competent person to run it?

Everyone knows Alexander Soros is only relevant and important because he got billions and billions of dollars that he did not earn. He’s somebody whose entire life comes not from any of his accomplishments, but purely his father’s. And you would think that would bestow somebody with a sense of shame, or at least humility, like, “Maybe I don’t actually understand how the majority of American voters reason and what’s important to them and what they’re going through because I was born into unimaginable billionaire wealth that I’ve now inherited.” But apparently, people like him have no shame. What ends up happening is that because of how I’m sure everyone around Alexander Soros has treated him since birth, how elites treat him knowing that he has more money than almost anybody – George Soros uses more money to influence the political system than anybody, so, you can imagine how the doors swing open for Alexander Soros and how they always have – and somehow that has convinced him not that he is a byproduct of luck and unearned success, but that he somehow has been endowed with great wisdom as reflected by the power that he has amassed.

Here he is issuing instructions to the Democratic Party. Every day, he posts pictures of himself with Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, or Nancy Pelosi. He’s always with them, donating money and having fundraisers. And here he is telling them what Democrats should do to win the election. This is the decree he issued on May 31:

If you’re Alexander Soros and you’re drowning in billions of dollars of wealth, and you have access to every single elite sector, maybe the things that you think are the top concerns for voters are not really the top concerns for voters. Maybe believing that Trump’s conviction in the Manhattan trial in a case involving a porn star and hush payments might not be the most important thing to Americans who weren’t born into billions of dollars of wealth. Yet, this is how they constantly reason. That’s the way in which these media people are: so out of touch with the public who they think they’re lecturing into and directing.

Here is actual empirical data, polling data after the Trump conviction that shows what Americans’ priorities actually are. From CBS News on June 9:

Among all the factors on voters’ minds this election, former President Donald Trump’s guilty verdict pales in comparison to issues like the economy, inflation, and the border — all items on which Trump maintains advantages. As such, the verdict has not dramatically reshaped the race.

(CBS News, June 9, 2024)

Again, if you are a very wealthy liberal immediately, let alone Alexander Soros, none of these issues matter to you. You don’t care about inflation. You don’t even notice inflation.

The first issue that Americans are concerned about, the major factor is the economy (81%); inflation (75%); state of democracy (74%); crime (62%); the U.S.-Mexico border (56%); gun policy (52%).

At the very end is Trump’s conviction: only 28%.

Look at the enormous disparity between that and all those other issues that have affected people’s lives. I’ll guarantee you that the 28% who even said they cared that much were overwhelmingly Democratic voters who would never vote for Trump, in any event. But the media keep telling them that’s such an important issue.

Again, if you’re a wealthy liberal elite on the coast, of course, you don’t think these issues matter. The economy is doing great for you. You don’t notice inflation because you’re so rich. You live in neighborhoods where crime doesn’t happen. You send your kids to private schools. You live in the kind of community where you don’t have to deal with assimilating immigrants. So, you can focus on these kinds of ethereal issues, like these abstract dangers Trump poses because of his conviction. And this gap between elite, political and media sectors, on the one hand, and the entire rest of the country on the other, can’t really be understated in terms of its importance.

Historically, it’s kind of like the Versailles model when you have the elite completely clustered in certain exclusive places that have nothing in common with the lives of all the other people over whom they think they have a right to rule. You get extreme levels of hatred, justifiable hatred from the ordinary people towards these elites.

We covered the EU elections last night. That’s been the major driving force of anti-establishment sentiment all throughout the West since 2016, with Brexit and Trump and even before that, and certainly since. And the more the elite class sees that ordinary Americans, ordinary citizens, are disobeying them and voting differently than they are instructed, the more contempt the elite class has for those people. And that, in turn, is perceived by the ordinary people, and they then repeal that class even more. That’s exactly what’s happening. It’s the reason why almost all institutions of authority have completely lost the faith and trust of the citizenry they once commanded, and why media institutions and media corporations, in particular, are so intensely and pervasively despised.