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What the Hell Is Going On

WTH: The WSJ’s Annie Linskey Explains Her Reporting on Biden’s Cognitive Decline

What the Hell Is Going On

AEI Podcasts

Politics, Government, History, News

4.4633 Ratings

🗓️ 9 July 2024

⏱️ 57 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On June 4, Wall Street Journal reporters Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes broke the groundbreaking story Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping. In response, Democrats and the media alike called it a “hit piece” against Biden designed to get Trump re-elected. But when Biden appeared on stage against Trump in their first presidential debate, America saw a frail and elderly president who before had only existed behind closed doors. Will Biden be the Democratic nominee for president? And how did the media help cover up Biden’s now obvious cognitive decline?

Annie Linskey is a White House reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Before joining the Journal, she worked for the Washington Post as a White House reporter and was the lead reporter on Democrats for the Boston Globe's Washington bureau during the 2016 campaign. She also reported on the Obama White House for Bloomberg News and BusinessWeek.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

This podcast is brought to you by the American Enterprise Institute.

0:03.0

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and share. Thanks for listening. Here's our show. What the hell's going on? What the hell is going on? What the hell is going on? I don't know what the hell he's talking about. You don't have to know what the hell is on it. What hell's the matter with these guys? We don't know what's going on. What hell's going on?

0:01.1

Who in God's name knows what it's all about.

0:29.3

Hi, I'm Daniel Pletka.

0:31.2

And I'm Mark Tiesin.

0:32.7

Welcome to our podcast.

0:34.2

What the hell is going on?

0:36.3

This is such an app title for a podcast. Mark, what the hell is going on? This is such an apt title for a podcast. Mark,

0:39.6

what the hell is going on? We keep getting validated every single time, I tell you.

0:46.4

So we are talking today to Annie Linsky, who's a reporter from the Wall Street Journal,

0:50.6

who co-wrote a big piece on June 4th about Biden's slipping. And it was a deeply

0:57.1

reported story, 45 different interviews, that basically went behind the scenes as to what's Joe Biden

1:06.0

like. You know, we kept hearing from the White House that, you know, these little clips of him,

1:11.3

these moments in the press conferences, that's not what he's really like.

1:15.5

I think the White House press secretary, Andrew Bates, said, not only is the president

1:19.8

perform around the clock, he maintains a schedule that tires, even younger aids.

1:23.8

Mitch Landrieu, the head of the campaign, said, this guy's tough, he's smart, he's on his game.

1:29.2

Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, he's sharp, intensely probing and detail-oriented and focus.

1:34.3

There was this effort on the part of the White House to tell the American people, don't believe your lion eyes.

1:40.7

The fact is Joe Biden is completely on top of his game. There's no cognitive decline. He's

1:46.5

lapping his young aides and all the rest of it. And it wasn't true, as we all learned in the debate.

1:50.9

And the first break in that was with the her report, where the special counsel spent five hours

...

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