Here are the opening lines of a Washington Post article:
How much information about a presidential candidate’s health does the public have a right to know?
A secretive president is mounting a lackluster reelection bid while self-isolating within a small circle of family members and advisers. A global crisis and a life-threatening medical condition haunt his campaign. His doctors mislead the public, his political party keeps silent, and Americans hear rumors rather than accurate medical information.
If you’re confused by this tough talk from the Post, that’s understandable. It makes more sense in context. The story appeared in October 2020, under a picture of Donald Trump.
The author let us know those words were really about Franklin D. Roosevelt, crafted as a warning to Trump: “… uncertainty about a candidate’s health can also doom a campaign … exactly what we may be witnessing today as Trump’s polls sink.”
The media did its best to stoke those fears in 2020. Remember the media frenzy over Trump’s cautious descent after he spoke to graduating cadets at West Point? The liberal cable outlets played it on a loop, and the New York Times headlined: “Trump’s Halting Walk Down Ramp Raises New Health Questions.”
Trump had tweeted, “The ramp that I descended after my West Point Commencement speech was very long & steep, had no handrail and, most importantly, was very slippery.”
The Times countered: “There was no evidence that the ramp was slippery, and the skies were clear during the ceremony.” Left unsaid was what evidence the newspaper would require to determine the slipperiness of a steel ramp in dress shoes.
The incident particularly alarmed the press, given that it happened after Trump used two hands to drink a glass of water. He was, we were reminded, nearly 74 years old, “the oldest a president has been in his first term.”
Fast-forward to 2024, and here we are, watching our current president shuffle to the podium, his speech peppered with senior moments. We have a leader who appears in worse health than anyone since FDR in 1944.
Then, as now, we had a press rooting for a president’s re-election. For FDR, the press had for more than a decade propped up a false image of his health, never showing him in the wheelchair he used every day.
UPI columnist Marquis Childs called the health rumors about Roosevelt a “wicked business. It is the vilest kind of fear campaign.”
Roosevelt died 82 days after his fourth inauguration.
We shouldn’t be surprised when the president’s advisers lie about his health, since they have every incentive to do just that. Their proximity to power rests on their boss continuing in the world’s most powerful position.
What’s glaringly absent today is a press corps that lives up to its self-proclaimed role as a referee in political disputes. Claiming to evaluate and expose the partisan players, the media have become as biased as those they aim to call out. Decked in their referee stripes, they’ve joined the game.
Today, the “conservative media” will declare that the president is clearly unfit to serve his term, while the “liberal media” will do their best to obfuscate and change the subject.
We’ve been handed the whistle, and simply consuming news without question isn’t enough. For this and other pressing issues, sadly, it’s up to us to investigate the evidence from every angle and make our own calls.
