Topic: CNSNews.com
Back in March, CNSNews.com touted how Rudy Giuliani asserted that Joe Biden was allegedly "showing obvious signs of dementia" (never mind Giuliani's own questionable mental health). Now that Biden's the Democratic presidential nominee -- and the Trump campaign is making questions about Biden's mental health a key piece of his campaign -- CNS is being a good Trump lackey and amplifying those questions.
A June 29 article by Craig Bannister -- who wrote the above Guiliani item -- touted a Rasmussen poll finding that "Due to his ever-growing legacy of public gaffes and displays of confusion, 38% of likely U.S. voters now believe that former Vice President Joe Biden has 'some form of dementia'." Bannister added:
Biden’s mental lapses have gained added public attention since he became the frontrunner to become the Democrat Party’s 2020 presidential candidate. Last week, for example, Biden claimed while campaigning in Pennsylvania that 120 million Americans have died from the coronavirus – 1,000 times the actual count.
Bannister -- like his Media Research Center co-worker Nicholas Fondacaro -- failed to mention that Biden corrected himself immediately after making the claim.
Bannister also did another article uniroinically quoting President Trump tweeting of Biden that "If I ever said something so mortifyingly stupid, the Fake News Media would come down on me with a vengeance." Bannister did concede this time that Biden "did appear to realize his mistake."
The next day, Bannister cherry-picked a quote from a statement from Biden on the issue and framed it as an unflattering headline -- Biden: ‘All You’ve Got to Do Is Watch Me’ to See if I’m Suffering Cognitive Decline -- in response to a question from a biased Fox News reporter.
Melanie Arter did a separate article based on the very same Biden response, then played gotcha:
Biden then confused the Thomas Jefferson Memorial for with the Lincoln Memorial.
“It's better that they do not, but it’s fundamentally different than pulling down the statue or going to the Lincoln Memorial and trying to pull-- not Lincoln Memorial - that's a bad example -the Jefferson memorial and grabbing Jefferson off his chair,” he said.
The Lincoln Memorial features the former President Abraham Lincoln sitting in a chair. The Jefferson Memorial features former President Thomas Jefferson standing up.
On July 14, Bannister found another poll on Biden's mental health to amplify:
While more than two-thirds of all likely U.S. voters say presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden should debate President Donald Trump, Democrat and Republican voters strongly disagree on whether or not the former vice president is up to the task, a new Rasmussen survey finds.
Bannister didn't seem concerned with Trump's mental health, nor did he question why Rasmussen apparently didn't poll people about it (because it has a pro-Republican and anti-Democratic bias).
CNS has amplified Biden's purported mental issues in other articles as well. In a June 23 article, Susan Jones uncritically quoted right-wing writer Victor Davis Hanson referencing "Joe Biden's cognitive impairment"; on June 26, Bannister promoted right-wing radio host Mark Levin in the midst of an attack on Nancy Pelosi's mental health, declaring that it was "Time for Pelosi to join Biden in a padded room" as he was "comparing Pelosi's lapse to those of former Vice President Joe Biden."
CNS has been similarly attacking the supposed mental health issues of Pelosi.By contrast, we could find only one recent CNS article that noted questions about President Trump's mental health: a March 11 article by Bannister quoting "a Yale psychiatrist with a history of claiming President Donald Trump is mentally unfit" stating that "she doesn’t even want to discuss the mental health of Democrat presidential frontrunner Joe Biden – because Biden’s mental lapses are merely 'gaffes' – while Trump’s endanger all of humanity." It was a lazy rewrite of a NewsBusters post by Tim Graham, who went on to complain that mental health professionals -- as opposed to the random people Rasmussen polled and Bannister touted -- keep raising questions about Trump's mental fitness, declaring that doing so was "partisan."
