New York Times---"Biden is Story Teller in Chief"

The New York Times finally found the courage, to tell the truth about President Biden's obsession with not telling the truth.

Their headline reads, "Biden, Storyteller in Chief, Spins Yarns That Often Unravel."

"President Biden has been unable to break himself of the habit of embellishing narratives to weave a political identity," they report.

Rather than use the "L" word---"lie," they describe his "non-truth-telling" with, "President Biden has embraced storytelling as a way of connecting with his audience, but his folksiness can veer into a personal folklore."

Having been in the tank with President Biden from the beginning, why would the old "Gray Lady" now report something the world already knows all too well?

Be informed, not misled.

The  New York Times story begins with this:

"Standing in front of Floridians who had lost everything during Hurricane Ian, President Biden on Wednesday recalled his own house being nearly destroyed 15 years ago: “We didn’t lose our whole home, but lightning struck and we lost an awful lot of it,” he said.

Mr. Biden has mentioned the incident before, once saying that he knows what it’s like “having had a house burn down with my wife in it.”

In fact, news reports at the time called it little more than “a small fire that was contained to the kitchen” and quoted the local Delaware fire chief as saying “the fire was under control in 20 minutes.”

The story is not an isolated example of embellishment.

The Times reminds the reader, "The exaggerated biography that Mr. Biden tells includes having been a fierce civil rights activist who was repeatedly arrested. He has claimed to have been an award-winning student who earned three degrees. And last week, speaking on the hurricane-devastated island of Puerto Rico, he said he had been “raised in the Puerto Rican community at home, politically.”

None of which were true.

To further make their point that President Biden has a problem with telling the truth, they said, "For more than four decades, Mr. Biden has embraced storytelling as a way of connecting with his audience, often emphasizing the truth of his account by adding, 'Not a joke!' in the middle of a story. But Mr. Biden’s folksiness can veer into folklore, with dates that don’t quite add up and details that are exaggerated or wrong, the factual edges shaved off to make them more powerful for audiences.

Okay, so now the public knows that President Biden has a discernment issue with the truth. He lies.

Often.

So often that the Times felt it was necessary to admit the obvious.

But why?

"If you think Biden lies, let us tell you about the previous president," they write.

Mr. Biden’s instances of exaggeration and falsehood fall far well short of those of his predecessor, who during four years in office delivered what the Washington Post fact checker called a “tsunami of untruths” and CNN described as a “staggering avalanche of daily wrongness.”

Former President Donald J. Trump lied constantly, not only about trivial details (like insisting it hadn’t rained during his inauguration when it clearly had) but also about consequential moments — misleading about the pandemic, perpetrating the “big lie” that Mr. Biden stole the 2020 election, and claiming falsely that the Capitol was not attacked by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021.

If the NYT had stopped here, you could think maybe, just maybe they had a near epiphany, turned a page, and are now going to begin telling the truth in their reporting. But they return to Biden again for a second round of exposing his "mistelling of stories."

NYT: "Mr. Biden’s fictions are nowhere near that scale. But they are emblematic of how the president, over nearly five decades in public life, has been unable to break himself of the habit of spinning embellished narratives, sometimes only loosely based on the facts, to weave together his political identity. And they provide political ammunition for Republicans eager to tar him as too feeble to run for re-election in two years."

Then the Times gave the reader a historical perspective:

His stories have been repeatedly and publicly challenged, as far back as his 1987 campaign for president, when his attempts to adopt someone else’s life story as his own, and his false claims about his academic record, forced him to withdraw.

So Trump's lies are bigger than Biden's lies, according to the New York Times.

Maybe the Times wants to be on record for having reported the dishonesty problem before the 2024 presidential election campaign gets underway, so if someone brings it up, it can be dismissed as "old news."

Conservatives, like Fox News and others, reacted on social media and on conservative news media outlets. 

Many readers were less-than-pleased with the Times’ article and accused the paper of downplaying Biden’s lies. National Review senior writer Charles C.W. Cooke blasted the article in a short rebuttal piece:

"Check out these euphemisms! ‘Yarns that often unravel.’ ‘Unable to break himself of the habit of embellishing narratives to weave a political identity.’ ‘Folksiness can veer into folklore.’ ‘The factual edges shaved off,’" Cooke wrote. "So: Lying, then? Notably, the Times does not shy away from using that word — accurately, of course — to describe Biden’s predecessor."

Takeaway

I personally think there are other agendas at work in this story.

Remember, President Biden has been a little above 50% "disapproval" for the past 13 months according to a number of polls.

It appears the Republicans will take back the majority in the House of Representatives in the coming election. They "could" also take control of the Senate if a couple of seats fall toward the GOP.

I think the politicians behind the scenes have come to believe that Biden may, in fact, try to run for a second term---and are beginning to take action to see that doesn't happen.

One of the writers of the New York Times story is Linda Qui. She has not written a negative article---if this can be considered negative---about President Biden since August of 2021---that's 14 months ago.

With the looming possibility of Republicans taking back Congress and Biden's perpetual low approval ratings coupled with rising inflation and a shrinking economy, this could be the beginning of a campaign by the Left to send him a message that "one term is enough. Don't run again."

"Bow out gracefully now" or "not so gracefully later."

Be sure to vote.

And remember:

"For the kingdom is the Lord’s: and he is the governor among the nations" (Psalm 22:28).

Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Prayerful.