Joe Biden backers can breathe easy knowing CNN’s got his back.
Sunday night’s two-hour presidential primary debate for the former vice president and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont had its share of tension between the two remaining contenders for the Democratic nomination, but when it was over, one thing was perfectly clear:
CNN is so in the tank for Biden that when it comes to even calling out a flagrant lie, its moderators would take a pass.
As some Americans might remember from the long-ago days of February, before the coronavirus pandemic took over the public consciousness, Biden had added to his already considerable reputation for stretching the truth when he claimed on multiple occasions that he’d been “arrested” during the apartheid days of South Africa while trying to visit human rights icon Nelson Mandela.
“This day, 30 years ago, Nelson Mandela walked out of prison and entered into discussions about apartheid,” Biden told a South Carolina audience on Feb. 11, according to The Washington Post.
“I had the great honor of meeting him. I had the great honor of being arrested with our U.N. ambassador on the streets of Soweto trying to get to see him on Robbens Island.”
It wasn’t just a Biden-esque slip of the tongue, either. He made the claim about the alleged arrest — which would have taken place in 1977 — twice more in the following week, according to The New York Times. And all evidence and common sense pointed to the fact that it wasn’t true.
Biden had never mentioned an “arrest” in South Africa before — including in his own memoirs, according to The Times — and even the apartheid government of South Africa in the 1970s would have thought twice about placing a sitting senator of the United States under arrest under any circumstances.
Eventually, of course, reality intruded, and before the month was out Biden was forced to admit that his heroic “arrest” was nothing more than being held briefly at a South African airport because he protested being separated from black lawmakers making a visit with him.
“I guess I wasn’t arrested, I was stopped. I was not able to move where I wanted to go,” Biden told CNN’s John Berman on Feb. 28.
Just over two weeks later, on Sunday night, Biden was on a national stage in his first debate since admitting that he’d lied about what to most people — and all politicians – would have been a key life event: getting arrested by an authoritarian regime while trying to visit a global hero like Mandela.
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In a sane world, it would have been a perfect opportunity for debate moderators to ask the aspiring presidential candidate if a lie like that made him untrustworthy enough that millions of Americans might have doubts about voting for him.
But it was a debate moderated by CNN, which meant the question went unasked.
And social media users noticed.
That question to Biden about getting arrested while trying to see Nelson Mandela is coming any moment now…
— Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) March 16, 2020
……..wait for it……..
— Fran (@franmc_fran) March 16, 2020
Will not hold my breath… #CNNSUCKS
— TIM BOSSERT (@OldMillXxX) March 16, 2020
lolz like they'd ask a hard question:(
— TermLimits (@RASPrive) March 16, 2020
That last tweet — “like they’d ask a hard question” — sums it up perfectly.
Liberals complain endlessly about President Donald Trump’s occasionally loose manners of speech, but when it comes to a serial fabricator like Biden – a man who has been caught making up an entire story about being present in the aftermath of American military heroics on a battlefield in Afghanistan – there is literally no interest on the part of so-called journalists to give the American people a true picture of the man asking for their votes.
Biden’s lie about his supposed “arrest” might be nothing compared with the man’s almost 50-year career in government — including eight as Barack Obama’s vice president — but it deserves an exploration, especially in light of Biden’s questionable or even erratic words and behavior on the campaign trail.
In a sane world, with even a reasonably honest media covering American politics, Biden’s flagrant lie would have at least come up in the conversation on Sunday night.
But even long before the coronavirus entered the picture, it was clear the presidential campaign was not taking place in the rules of a sane world, being covered by a media that can’t be considered anything close to honest.
So Joe Biden’s backers could rest easy on Sunday – and every day heading into November, at least when it comes to kid-glove coverage.
CNN’s got his back.
Story cited here.