This is What Happened to President Joe Biden

We finally know the origins and perhaps intent behind the gossip and lies spread about President Joe Biden.

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If Olivia Nuzzi had not been denied access to President Joe Biden in 2021, she might have been able to sell her book.

But the Biden people didn’t trust her, and so she and her then romantic partner Ryan Lizza of Politico had their book deal pulled. Cut to 2024, and Nuzzi contributed a large part to the “Biden is senile” narrative with a profile she wrote about the President where one of his larger sins was not remembering her and having a face that she felt was untrustworthy.

We now know that in January of 2024, Nuzzi was conducting an undisclosed romantic affair she’s described as “digital” with Biden’s political opponent, RFK, Jr. So literally during the same month she describes unnamed Democrats contacting her to express concern about Biden, she was engaged in a sexting affair with his rival.

This piece was sourced with unnamed “Democrats” who supposedly told Nuzzi starting in January of 2024 that there was a conspiracy of silence around Biden’s decline. She didn’t publish this until July of 2024, so you might ask why she waited until it would usually be too late for Democrats to pick a new nominee to report it.

Her Biden piece was described by Oliver Darcy of CNN, who broke the news about Nuzzi’s undisclosed affair with RFK, Jr. and rightly called it a "conflict of interest” as “one of the most consequential pieces of the 2024 campaign, which was about what she called the conspiracy of silence to protect Joe Biden. And given that readers did not know that this relationship was ongoing with RFK, it raises questions about conflict of interest, because RFK has been an active participant in the 2024 campaign."

I wrote recently about the distinctions between the moral and ethical issues in this affair, with the main gist being people who dismiss this as “Who cares, they’re both adults and both bad people” are missing is the larger issue that a journalist cannot be having an affair with a subject while reporting on the subject’s political rivals. This is not acceptable, it creates a lack of trust for readers and it jeopardizes an employer’s credibility.

It also arguably (as I wrote about for The Daily previously) changed the outcome of the 2024 election by starting the rush to drive Biden out, to paint him as incapable, which could well have inflicted damage upon the U.S. internationally as the President was engaged in diplomatic efforts to get hostages released as the media was incorrectly and without actual evidence other than gossip built upon Biden’s stutter and gait changes attributed via an actual medical report by a real doctor (as opposed to Trump’s ‘THE MOST PERFECT SPECIMEN’ discredited doctor notes) to an injury saying he was too senile to run and even to be president.

We won’t be discussing the morality of then engaged Nuzzi and married RFK, Jr’s affair, because that isn’t related to journalist ethics, which is my focus in this series on her actions.

Both of these people have track records of being destroyers of others, with RFK, Jr having 70 years to perfect his capabilities. Neither of these people is a victim, even if RFK, Jr is threatening to sue and his security expert even mentioning potential criminal charges against Nuzzi. For what, we don’t know, other than that he claims he blocked her repeatedly and she contacted him from new numbers and emails telling him she had urgent information to impart to him about hit pieces coming out against him, and then when he unblocked, his friend who identifies as a journalist (and has a Substack that on first glace appears devoted to antivax conspiracies and coverage of RFK, Jr) says Nuzzi deluged him with increasingly pornographic photos and videos.

That’s not cool, and if true it gives stalker vibes. I can believe this of her, given her history of rule breaking followed by being forgiven for actual crimes (some of her conduct calls up weak tea Project Veritas tactics) and the Kennedy name being some kind of “are you really that stupid” aphrodisiac to the dynasty-attracted, and also as someone who has had the bad fortune to need to develop a stalker radar.

But it’s also hard to believe Kennedy when he blames her pornography for being hard to resist. RFK, Jr. has a history of being unfaithful and wildly cruel to his wives. He is not a good person to be married to, and that is no doubt why he could endorse woman-hating Donald Trump. It’s apparent that he is also not a good person with whom to have a “digital” affair.

Really, what RFK, Jr. and Nuzzi are doing to one another is almost just desserts. She’s thrown bombs of gossip since she was 20 year-old-intern for Anthony Weiner's New York City mayoral campaign for 20 days and then writing a tell-all that included her now-signature move of unnamed sources she successfully uses to undermine campaigns of Democrats, claiming an unnamed source told her that Weiner had lied to his campaign manager, who was one of a "series of staffers who have fled the campaign.” Now gossip bombs are being tossed her way by RFK, Jr (and maybe her ex-fiancée at Politico).

Does her Weiner piece sound familiar to her 2024 piece on Biden, in which she focused on what she claimed was a face of “uncanny valley” appearance altered by fillers from month to month with “Democrats” leaking to her that he wasn’t up to the job?

Yes, yes, it does. And it finally goes some lengths toward explaining the weirdness of the reporting around Biden.

The lack of facts surrounding the campaign to bring Biden down has been bothering me since it started, because it made no sense. It contradicted things I saw and the policies he was and still is pushing forward. But it was all anyone in legacy media could talk about once Biden faltered in the debate with Donald Trump. I’m not suggesting Biden isn’t old. What I’m saying is he was and is doing his job. The New York Times insinuated he had Parkinson’s based on a rumor they didn’t bother to investigate, which was easy to debunk.

What I want to convey to you is this is what passes for news coverage now. You are being fed some (unvetted, as far as I’m concerned because yes, transparency with mistakes, point of view and conflicts matters because reporting relies upon trust with the readers) reporter’s personal feelings about a candidate whom they have a personal beef against because they couldn’t get their book published because of him. This is how agendas are being set against *certain* candidates.