Topic: CNSNews.com
It's part of CNSNews.com's editorial agenda to spread the narrative that President Biden is going senile. So when Biden tripped on the stairway to Air Force One, CNS was ON IT, somehow cranking out five stories' worth of related content, four of which appeared on March 19, the day of the incident.
An anonymous CNS employee -- why is that employee withholding their byline for this apparently important story? -- breathless reported in the lead story:
President Joe Biden fell three times while trying to board Air Force One this morning to fly to Atlanta to speak about the horrible murders that took place there this week.
Video footage shows Biden leaving Marine One and walking a short distance across the tarmac to the stairs leading up to Air Force One.
As he tries to climb those stairs, he falls three times.
After the third fall, he manages to keep his feet and climb the remainder of the stairs into the airplane.
Biden will turn 79 on November 20.
Emphasizing Biden's age is another way CNS tries to feed into the right-wing Biden-is-senile narrative.
This wasw followed by another anonymously written story highlightig that "A video posted on YouTube by the Reagan Library, shows then-President Ronald Reagan walking down the stairs from Air Force One—while not holding the railing—and then walking back up the stairs, while occasionally not holding the railing, and responding to reporters yelling questions at him. The video was made on Aug. 10, 1982 when Reagan was 71 years old." This anonymous writer also complained that "When Reagan was running for President at 69 years of age, the New York Times repeatedly reported on assertions that he was 'too old' for the job."
A third anonymously written story went back to the senility angle:
When President Joe Biden gave his nationally televised address on Thursday announcing that on Friday his administration would achieve his goal of delivering 100 million COVID-19 vaccination shots in his first 100 days in office, he called Vice President Kamala Harris “President Harris.”
The next day, Biden would trip three times while climbing the stairs of Air Force One.
the anonymous writer did not explain how these tywo events are connected.
The fourth story that day did, surprisingly, carry a byline, that of Craig Bannister. He's apparently proud enough of his attempt to dunk on Biden to put his name on it, unlike his fellow CNS employee[s]:
On Friday, President Joe Biden made headlines and viral video by falling three times while trying to climb stairs boarding Air Force One. But, last September, Candidate Biden mocked the way President Donald Trump navigated stairs.
Visiting West Point for a commencement ceremony last September, Biden claimed to be more agile and vigorous than Trump. "Look at how he steps and look at how I step,” Biden urged.
[...]
On Friday, however, it was Biden who stumbled, multiple times, as he tried to run up the stairs. As CNSNews.com reported, video footage shows Biden leaving Marine One and walking a short distance across the tarmac to the stairs leading up to Air Force One. As he tries to climb those stairs, he falls three times.
Bannister concluded: "Biden will turn 79 years old on November 20."
Bannister returned on March 23 to uncritically help Donald Trump try to dunk on Biden:
Former President Donald Trump said he expected President Joe Biden to take the type of tumble he did last Friday on stairs boarding Air Force One.
“I expected it,” Trump said in an interview Monday with Newsmax TV, when he was asked if he was shocked when Biden fell three times on the stairs while boarding the plane:
[...]
Trump recalled how media attacked him last year, when he carefully and slowly descended an icy ramp at West Point. “The last thing I wanted was to take a tumble, like Biden did,” Trump said, noting that the “lamestream media” virtually ignored the news when Biden actually did fall:
Given that Trump traversed that ramp in June, the claim that it was icy doesn't hold water (or ice). The ramp, despite Trump's claims to the contrary, was not particularly steep.
By contrast, a search of the CNS archive reveals that it devoted exactly zero articles about Trump's awkward walk down the ramp at West Point or his even more awkward attempt to drink water there. It did get a passing mention in an article four days after the incident that quoted Nancy Pelosi referencing it.
