After Leaving NBC News, Chuck Todd Explains Why ‘Traditional Press’ Downplayed Biden’s Issues

Former NBC News chief political analyst Chuck Todd said Wednesday that legacy media was “subtle” with its coverage of former President Joe Biden’s age-related issues to avoid the perception of boosting President Donald Trump.

Corporate media spent years downplaying voters’ and Republicans’ concerns regarding Biden’s mental acuity until his disastrous June 2024 debate against Trump. Todd, on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” said that legacy media members made an error by not focusing on Biden’s problems. 

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“I sit here, and I’ll defend a little bit of this in that I would argue the reason people were able to come to their own conclusion on Joe Biden is because of the media coverage,” Todd said. “Look, we were subtle. ‘He’s using the back staircase. He’s not using the front staircase.’ ‘Hey, he’s not doing any interviews.’ So there was this reluctance to draw the conclusion, to say, ‘Is he not doing this?’ And that I agree with. That was held back — held back a lot.”

Todd also said that the media acted similarly toward the end of former President Ronald Reagan’s second term under comparable circumstances, perhaps out of a sense of “decorum.”