With most major news outlets fishing for ratings by featuring non-stop negative coverage of former President Donald Trump, it’s hard to imagine so-called “journalists” could devote any more attention to shredding him. Yet, in a recent interview with shock-jock Howard Stern, President Biden suggests that the mainstream media refuses to “go after” his political opponent. 

“I think some of them are worried about attacking him, about taking him on,” Biden lamented during the hour-long Stern segment. 

While not directly naming any particular news organization, his comments seem to have been aimed at the New York Times. Recently, the Times has faced criticism for its less-than-favorable coverage of Biden, starting after the President refused to sit down for an interview with the notoriously left-leaning publication. 

It’s becoming media warfare of epic proportions, with a surprising “victim” in Biden himself.  

It’s a feud for the ages, as detailed in a Politico report last week. According to the report, tensions had been rising between the Biden administration and the Times for months before an unintended attribution of a quote to a named source rather than an unnamed one blew the bubbling cauldron of Biden’s childishness sky high. 

The war between Biden and the Times started quietly in 2019 after the Times wasn’t tipped off that the then-presidential candidate was appearing publicly for the first time after announcing his intention to run for office. Reporters from other outlets were told about the informal stop at a pizzeria in Wilmington, but the Times was left out.  

Throughout Biden’s campaign, the Times covered Biden’s competition more thoroughly than his own because the news organization found more headline-worthy news in their campaigns. After all, Biden was campaigning from his basement while other candidates were on the trail taking on the issues under the national spotlight. 

But when news of Hunter Biden’s laptop and his shady business dealings in Ukraine found its way into the Times, the relationship between the news outlet and Biden was stretched to the limit. In late 2019, the Biden campaign met with Times editor Patrick Healy to discuss the issue. During this meeting, Healy defended the Times’ coverage of the breaking scandal, and team Biden was less than pleased. 

Since then, Biden has found himself under fire by a news organization that seems almost ready to provide the truth about the Biden presidency. The Times has held nothing back regarding unflattering coverage of the President, including expressing concerns over his age. 

The feud indirectly took down Vice-President Kamala Harris when she was asked during an interview with the Times why her boss didn’t want to grant an interview of his own. She was reportedly “upset” over that line of questioning and called those minutes a “waste of time.” 

For his part, Biden refuses to sit down for an interview with the Times, a situation that increasingly frustrates the organization. Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger has said that Biden has a chance to “prove” he is still mentally fit for the presidency by sitting down for an interview with the outlet. 

But accusing the Times of being soft on Trump is an unbelievable stretch of the imagination. That didn’t stop the President from claiming that “some” in the media are “overly worried” about taking on Trump during his interview with Stern. 

Stern kept the interview personal, encouraging Biden to talk about the losses of his first wife Naomi and son Beau and his pre-presidential career as a senator and vice president. However, when the interview inevitably turned to the upcoming 2024 election, Biden couldn’t keep himself from blaming his tanking campaign on flawed media. “There are no editors anymore,” Biden rambled. “The free press is not speaking up as much as it used to.” 

Inexplicably, Biden claims that the media is “afraid” to cover Trump. What’s unclear, however, is how much more negative press Biden thinks would benefit his campaign. The Biden administration has single-handedly turned every mainstream media headline into a caricature of the truth, with Trump’s legal battles dominating news coverage from all liberal news organizations. 

It’s a weak cry from a man with a dying campaign and one that he emphasized during the White House Correspondents Dinner. During the event, he took another opportunity to exaggerate the “risks” of a Trump presidency and call upon news organizations to increase their negative coverage of Trump for, of course, the sake of Democracy. 

Biden has orchestrated the perfect storm of negativity against a political rival in a style that would make Vladimir Putin envious. But it’s somehow still not enough. Rather than relying on the anti-Trump press, Biden should do something more newsworthy than tripping over the air and mumbling incoherently behind a microphone.