At today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the "Biden cover-up," former White House Press Secretary and current 2Way host Sean Spicer called out the media for not sufficiently covering former President Biden's mental state.
00:03Chairman Schmidt and Cornyn, members of the committee, thank you for having me.
00:06I was asked to share my experience as a senior White House staffer with respect to the interactions that I and other senior staff had with President Trump during his first term.
00:16During my tenure as press secretary, I interacted with the president multiple times every day.
00:21Most days I would talk to him by phone or in person early in the morning and then multiple times throughout the day, including weekends.
00:28For the most senior positions in the White House, those designated by the rank of assistant to the president, which includes the White House chief of staff, the White House counsel, and the press secretary, it is critical to have regular interaction with the president.
00:42The position of press secretary especially demands this type of consistent and intentional communication.
00:48I or any other press secretary, regardless of administration, could not do the job effectively without regular communication with the president.
00:56It was my responsibility to have the most up-to-date understanding of President Trump's position on policy, personnel, and everything in between.
01:05Admittedly, I made a couple of rather high-profile mistakes during my tenure.
01:10You may have read some of them.
01:12But in all cases, those mistakes occurred when I wasn't connected with the president's thinking or position on a particular issue or policy.
01:19Coordinating and collaborating among even the most senior staff cannot replace direct communication with the president himself.
01:27In my position, I was very well acquainted with the president's work, his day-to-day responsibilities, and his fitness for office.
01:35I watched him serve with the strength and endurance of a man half his age.
01:38As you can see, on almost a daily basis through events, statements, and social media posts, he's up early and ends his days very late.
01:47Yet in several instances during his first term, the media questioned his fitness for office.
01:53Guests and so-called experts like Sanjay Gupta at CNN were called upon to speculate on the result of Trump's physical and mental well-being.
02:01The Washington Post ran hit pieces with headlines like,
02:05The White House Struggles to Silence Talk of Trump's Mental Fitness.
02:09Vox wrote, Is Trump Mentally Unfit to be President?
02:12NBC ran a story by the Associated Press that raised mental health concerns regarding the president.
02:19CNN's Brian Stelter questioned if members of the news media were, quote,
02:23Tiptoeing around obvious questions about President Trump's instability.
02:27These headlines were not isolated instances.
02:29Most major news outlets ran with these ridiculous type of propaganda pieces.
02:35To use one of the media's favorite terms, these inquiries were without evidence.
02:40That brings us to the juxtaposition of how the very same media covered the Biden administration.
02:46To be blunt, the legacy media failed the American people.
02:50They failed to do their job.
02:53Many, rightly so, believe the media in this country is culpable in covering up the obvious decline
02:59of the 46th president of the United States.
03:02The scrutiny that was baselessly directed at President Trump during his first term
03:06was wholly absent from the media coverage of the Biden White House.
03:10The media lacked any sense of curiosity that would naturally stem from what the public could see with their own eyes.
03:17Even in the face of deeply concerning and public signs of President Biden's mental and physical decline,
03:25legacy media outlets were silent.
03:28Biden and his senior aides flatly dismissed the need for a cognitive test during his tenure,
03:33as had been requested of President Trump.
03:35Yet no protest was heard from the voices that were so critical of Trump.
03:39With the exception of a couple of White House reporters, like Fox News Channel's Peter Doocy,
03:44reporters generally refused to breach the subject at White House briefings.
03:50News outlets weren't the only ones complicit in covering up Biden's decline.
03:54Presidential staff would have or should have been interacting with Biden on a daily basis.
03:59At best, his administration was grossly negligent.
04:03At worst, Biden's staff actively concealed his fitness for office.
04:07When White House Press Secretary Corinne Jean-Pierre said President Biden could run circles on her,
04:13there were only two possible conclusions.
04:16That she herself was in poor health and in need of medical assistance, or that she was lying.
04:23There is no question that a vast difference between how President Trump interacted with his staff
04:28and how President Biden did.
04:30Whether one supports President Trump or not,
04:33he is clearly the most accessible and transparent president in modern history.
04:37And there is no question who is running this country.
04:41The same cannot be true, said of President Biden.
04:44It is the president who is elected by the American people.
04:47The role of staff is to execute his agenda and policies.
04:51I thank the committee for holding this hearing so that going forward,
04:54the American people can have the confidence in who is running the country and making critical decisions.
