Ex-WaPo Fact Checker Grilled Over Concealment Of Biden Decline
“What kind of sourcing did you need to say Joe Biden was suffering cognitive decline? Did you see him trailing off regularly?”
Independent journalist Mark Halperin recently spoke to Glenn Kessler, a fact checker who took a buyout and left the Washington Post last week.
Halperin really grilled Kessler over the paper’s lack of coverage of Biden’s mental decline and did not let him off the hook as he tried to make excuses. The clip of their discussion, which you should watch below, is being shared widely on Twitter/X.
Kessler was one of the media figures who pushed the ‘cheap fake’ narrative. I’m amazed this tweet is still up.
New #FactCkecker –> ‘Cheapfake’ Biden videos enrapture right-wing media, but deeply mislead https://t.co/LQkoNsI4Go
— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) June 14, 2024
In the course of their exchange, it seemed like Kessler was more concerned with discrediting conservative outlets than he was with getting to the truth about Biden.
Transcript via Real Clear Politics:
MARK HALPERIN, HOST: Regarding Joe Biden. When you looked at the question of whether the videos being played largely in conservative media that showed apparent cognitive decline of the president, what conclusion did you reach in Fact Checker about those videos?
GLENN KESSLER, FORMER WASHINGTON POST FACT-CHECKER: Well, you’re talking about when he supposedly meandered off to talk to the parachutists? Yeah. So that fact check was looking specifically at how that video was being portrayed on news sites.
MARK HALPERIN: Yes, sir.
GLENN KESSLER: And what we did was we went and got the full video in the full context, because it looked like the way it was cut, and particularly distributed by the RNC, it looked like Joe Biden was wandering off and he didn’t show him talking to parachutists. What we showed was that he was talking to parachutists. And I’ve said this before, fact checks are a complement to the news coverage, not a supplement.
Yes, sir. The overall context of the Washington Post coverage, we had coverage about, you know, was he too old? We had columnists saying he shouldn’t be running again.
And that fact was specifically about that video distributed by the RNC.
MARK HALPERIN: Understand, but the power of the Pinocchios and the power of the fact check, when you write that, people say that and say, the Washington Post is saying that that video is not reflective of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline. That’s what people take from that. They do.
They do. Glenn, they do. You know the power that you had in that job.
So do you think the Washington Post, how would you rate the job the Washington Post did in covering Joe Biden’s, not his age, not whether David Ignatius thought he should run again, but how good a job would you say the Post did in covering the reality of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline?
GLENN KESSLER: I would say, so there was a lot of effort to produce a story that would look at very carefully at what seemed to be a cognitive decline. It never came together because we couldn’t get enough people on the record.
MARK HALPERIN: Glenn, Glenn, do you know the moment where Joe Biden spoke to a dead Congresswoman at a public event? Are you familiar with that moment? Yes, yes, yes.
Okay. What kind of sourcing did you need to say Joe Biden was suffering cognitive decline? Did you see him trailing off regularly?
Be sure to watch the whole thing.
Dropping soon: an explosive new @NextUpHalperin.@MarkHalperin interviews with @GlennKesslerWP, former Washington fact checker.
WATCH: Kessler's stunning justification of his Biden "Deepfake" fact check.
Stay tuned for MUCH more… pic.twitter.com/Lo78lvWHtI
— Next Up with Mark Halperin (@NextUpHalperin) August 7, 2025
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
Die a thousand deaths Kessler. You and your fellow toadies in the MSM.
its no crime to lie to the public,,…apparently
the only cure is to dismantle the lefty run public school system
then the propaganda machine that steers america left will not have the backup they need…the youth of america
When the report came out the other day about the titan submersible implosion, I asked AI some questions—how much it cost to build and how much passengers paid to ride—then asked for an analogy using the example of a man building a taxi and charging passengers an exorbitant sum to ride. It told such a fine story I was encouraged to ask more.
I then told AI I had heard Biden was mentally impaired and asked it give me an analogy like it did with the taxi. And it told me a story about a puppet who became president, but one knew who was controlling it. True story.
I asked google AI the same thing and it told me a story about an aged athlete who was in such bad shape he couldn’t play, so he became a coach. I asked what if the coach had a son with no talent, but he allowed him play. And AI told me, “You’re referring to Hunter.”
Sounds like the responses to about half the performance reviews I ever did.
“I put a lot of effort into completing the project on time and within budget, but it just didn’t some together.”
“So you failed?”
“No, you don’t understand. My work is not a complement, but a supplement to all of our work.”
My sonnet for the WP.
How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.
I hate thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I hate thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I hate thee freely, as men strive for right. …
With apologies to Liz. All this goes double for the New York Times.
The Times will never live down Walter Duranty’s cover up of the Holodomor in the Ukraine. Robert Conquest had to endure abuse from liberal professors for his book “Harvest of Sorrow.” I personally talked to Ukrainians on how they survived. They buried their food. They took the dirt from the hole in blankets and scattered it in the woods. They always boiled their drinking water even after they came to the US. So when I read the abuse heaped on Conquest, I fumed as I knew the truth. The MSM and the many academics qualify as the absolute scum of the earth. Kessler provides us with a good example of what they are like. Beyond shame.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. Four-score men and four-score more, Could not make Humpty Dumpty where he was before.
Biden’s mental incapacity was obvious to anyone with eyes. But somehow, to his allies, there was always an excuse to look the other way.
#NoSecretRulers
So democrats never EVER filled film footage? ALL D videos were 100% true, NOT.
The way they all glommed onto the retarded “cheap fake” mistake by Cringe Jean-Pierre was hysterical. Once again, not knowing English too well, Cringe Jean-Pierre mistakenly said “cheap fake” when she was trying to remember the, then, new phrase “deep fake”, which was the big term at the time. But all of the NPC sheep on the left made pretend that “cheap fake” was a real expression and kept saying it but it was just another of Cringe Jean-Pierre’s demonstrations of a press secretary who couldn’t speak English.
Interesting and enlightening interview. It seems that one of the “fact checkers” techniques used by Glenn Kessler to arrive at the answer they want is simply by sharply narrowing their focus of investigation rather than addressing the real question. The reader thinks that the “fact checker” has addressed the real question when in fact the “fact checker” has addressed a different question. This is just another way of lying. Old Joe did singly wander off from the group of leaders and had to be led back to the fold. It was proper to call out this aberrant behavior.