Biden of Oz: Media’s make-believe campaign

FPI / September 16, 2020

Joe Biden's handlers and the major media have worked in concert to project the holographic image fronting the narrative of a supposed moderate candidate who radiates "an aura of kindness and moderation in times of plague, panic, and protest," historian and columnist Victor Davis Hanson noted.

"We remember 'The Great and Powerful' Wizard of Oz fakery, a formidable screen image created backstage by gears and levers operated by a tiny man 'behind the curtain,' " Hanson wrote for American Greatness on Sept. 13.

"For now Joe Biden’s best hope is that some Emerald City media lackey does not play the role of the tiny dog Toto, rip away the curtain, and reveal the tiny man and his machinery behind the projection," Hanson wrote.

The Democrat presidential candidate's "Oz functionaries seemingly are always experimenting with all sorts of screen props. The trick is to discover how best their challenged candidate can square the circle of completing sentences and remaining semi-coherent, while not giving away the game that his illusionists are feeding him answers to synthetic questions," Hanson wrote.

Uunlike President Donald Trump, Biden does not conduct "free-wheeling, unscripted press conferences. He will not do extended one-on-one interviews with a disinterested journalist. He rarely will even try Trump-like cameo appearances on CNN or MSNBC to answer unscripted questions from supporters. His press events instead are Orwellian, requiring a media mass suspension of disbelief."

Hanson continued: "The questions are canned. They are submitted in advance by 'journalists,' whether formally or via electronic chatter. The inquiries are obsequious — seldom a word about Hunter Biden, China, Biden’s troubling racist remarks, his handsy past, his scary cognitive lapses, or his 'contract' with Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Instead the softball, known-in-advance inquiries are in spirit carried over from the Obama years, phrased in the manner of 'Were you outraged enough by Trump’s outrage?' "

Appearing on Fox Business's Varney and Co. on Tuesday, columnist and business analyst Liz Peek said:

"Democrats have put forward a candidate that they know, and they’ve known for months, is not capable of mixing it up with reporters. How in the world is he going to be capable of mixing it up with Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping? This is an incredible scam being perpetrated on American voters. The reason he needs a teleprompter as you point out is because he really does not have any serious grounding… I think this is appalling. And by the way it’s not working… All these rumors and reports about him relying on a teleprompter, by the way make the media complicit in this scam."

Indeed, when Fox News anchor Brett Baier asked Biden national press surrogate T.J. Ducklo whether Biden used a stealth teleprompter, Ducklo would not answer with a simple yes or no. Instead, he attacked the "right-wing" Fox News for asking too many partisan questions.

"So we were left with a de facto 'yes': Biden does read off a stealthy teleprompter when answering canned press questions — and gives the impression he does not," Hanson wrote.

"But Biden, like the mirage of the Wizard of Oz, nonetheless can’t always keep the curtain closed.

"When he strains to see the teleprompter that sits just behind, and thus out of sight of, his camera lens, he slips and mutters 'bring it closer' — reminding any who watch, except the media that helps collude in these orchestrations, that the question asked is not a serious one, but a prompt to facilitate the proper non-spontaneous response."

During an interview where he was showing off family photos, a reflection in the photos showed the presence of a teleprompter. On other occasions Biden has been seen searching in vain for his “schedule” and asking his handlers to fetch it. He even read out loud the written directives his controllers put on the teleprompter so Biden would not lose his place.

So not surprisingly, Hanson wrote "during one of these sessions, out came a reference to his script’s talking point 'topline' headings. When faking impromptu answers, Biden bumps into and voices his handlers’ notation of 'end of quotation.' "

Hanson continued: "As a general rule, the Soviet-style apologia for the media-Biden fusion — usually outsourced to a now utterly corrupt left-wing institution called 'fact-checking' — only solidifies the fact that the media and the Biden campaign are indistinguishable.

"Biden is now ordered to keep still on the issues of the day, because what he once said to get nominated and please the Left would lose him the election. He wants to defund the police, but not to defund the police. He wants to phase out fossil fuels and end fracking but not to end fracking in Electoral College-rich Pennsylvania.

"The rioting, Biden insists, is due to police brutality but not due to it entirely. Trump’s COVID policies killed thousands, but Biden’s own bromides are either identical or would be less effective.

"And on and on, as Biden is made to wink and nod to the Left that his only role is to get them elected before collapsing at the finishing line.

"The media thinks this will work, and so owns the project. Biden will stay sequestered, visit a key state occasionally, pop out of the plane to say he is “barnstorming” Michigan or Wisconsin and then fly back into his Biden bunker for more Zoom puff interviews—and hope progressive polls show that he can endure weekly bleeding until November 3."

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