OPINION:
White House spokespeople are declining to comment on excerpts from a new book that reveals who and what President Biden is really scared of — and with good reason.
In a forthcoming book by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, the journalistic duo revealed that in mid-2021 Mr. Biden “assessed” Fox News “as one of the most destructive forces in the United States,” and its founding father Rupert Murdoch “as one of the most dangerous men in the world.”
The revelations are revealed several chapters into Mr. Martin and Mr. Burns’ new scribe, “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future,” which is set to be released in May. A few months ago, the president was caught on a hot mic calling Fox’s White House correspondent Peter Doocy “a stupid son of a b——.”
Mr. Biden has been known to joke about White House tension with the conservative news network in the past. In a CNN town hall last October Mr. Biden mused, “I turn on Fox to find out how popular I am.” But Mr. Biden’s comments as reported by Mr. Martin and Mr. Burns are no laughing matter.
Naming any American as more dangerous than brutal dictators such as North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, Iran’s Ali Khamenei, Cuba’s Miguel Diaz-Canel, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro and Russia’s Vladimir Putin is anything but amusing. Still, Americans seem to be what Mr. Biden and his elite Democratic inner circle are most worried about. The book reportedly describes Fox as a “torrent of anti-Biden programming, stoking skepticism about vaccines and disseminating wild conspiracy theories about the January 6 attack.”
The president’s statements are vastly different than his Nov. 7, 2020, reelection promise to be a president “not to divide, but to unite.” In that statement, Mr. Biden said, “To make progress, we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy. We are not enemies. We are Americans. The Bible tells us that to everything there is a season — a time to build, a time to reap, a time to sow. And a time to heal.
This is the time to heal in America.”
But how can a nation heal when the president considers the opposition party’s leading news network “destructive” and its founder “dangerous?”
Journalists are guardians of the First Amendment. It is their moral duty to exercise and thus protect our nation’s sacred right to free speech and a free press. An attack on any journalism organization is an attack on all — and thus, an assault on, or at the least, disregard for the institution of free speech itself — and that’s no way to “build back better” the foundations of our great nation. We suggest the president look within and take his own advice because we agree with his post-election statement.
“To make progress, we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy. We are not enemies. We are Americans.”
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