The media's fawning coverage of the inauguration of Biden

 Eddie Scarry:

There was never a doubt that the absolute hysteria of the national press would go away the minute President Biden was sworn into office, but good God, was Inauguration Day humiliating for Washington journalists.

Or rather, it should be humiliating, but they have no shame and don't care that half the country finds them cringeworthy and pathetic.

The glee expressed all day by reporters and talking heads who were relieved to have a Democrat back in office was irrepressible. And not just any Democrat, but Biden, a Democrat who loves Washington and government ritual as much as they do.

Each hour of CNN's programming was a back-to-back tribute to Biden for the promise that he would turn the clock back and make Washington what it once was — a stage for overpaid dignitaries, bureaucrats, and, most of all, journalists to tell the rest of the country over and over again about how important and serious they are.

Gone were the hostilities experienced during the Trump administration. Liberal reporters had only sweetness and light in their hearts for Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Brianna Keilar, the "chief Washington correspondent" of CNN, shouted out at Biden during the inauguration parade, "Can you unite the country, Mr. President?"

Just thereafter, her colleague Jim Sciutto called out to Biden the exact same question. Minutes later, he yelled at Harris, "What's your first job?" before he chuckled and told viewers that Biden and Harris "are hitting the ground running."

During the White House press briefing, the first of the new administration, an Associated Press reporter asked press secretary Jen Psaki if she viewed her role as a matter of advancing the president's interest or giving accurate information to the public. "When you are up there," the reporter said, "do you see your primary role as promoting interests of the president, or are you there to provide us the unvarnished truth so that we can share that with the American people?"

Contrast that with Kayleigh McEnany's first day as press secretary during the Trump administration last year, when a reporter asked her to "pledge to us that you will never lie to us from that podium."

Wow, what a difference a party in power makes when it comes to the media's mood.

Mind you, Biden, on his first day in office, had signed a wave of executive actions that reversed or signaled his intent to reverse much of Donald Trump's legacy. There may have been one question about that, but if you yawned, you would have missed it. There is right now a migrant caravan of roughly 8,000 Central Americans heading toward the U.S. border. Part of Biden's executive actions was to relax restrictive measures Trump put on immigration. No one asked Psaki if that would be for the good of the country at any point in our history, let alone during a pandemic.

...

Here is more on the over the top giddiness by the media from Tim Graham: 

...

... over the last few decades, we’ve observed a pattern of the media raining (sometimes storming) on the GOP parade, while going dramatically over the top in celebrating new Democrat presidents. January 20, 2021 was no exception.

Even on the night before the inauguration, CNN political director David Chalian oozed that the sidelights on the National Mall's reflecting pool to commemorate Americans who died from the coronavirus are like "extensions of Joe Biden's arms embracing America."

For his part, CNN public relations manager Matt Dornic tweeted out a GIF of the song "Oh What a Beautiful Morning."

It wasn’t subtle.
...

After the speech, ABC compared Biden to Abe Lincoln, and their recruited historian Mark Updegrove underlined it "Echoes of Lincoln on the eve of Civil War in 1861, the worst domestic crisis that we've ever faced as a nation….This, today, was a triumph of democracy."

Reporter Byron Pitts oozed "today's inauguration felt more like a church service, right? And we see there, right after the sermon, the congregation doesn't want to go home. People are hugging, shaking hands. I thought from Joe Biden today, certainly, he was commander in chief, but he was also papa in chief."

On CBS after the speech, White House reporter Major Garrett called it a homily, like Biden was in church: "The beginning had a soaring rhetoric. A tiny bit at the end. The middle... it sounded like a homily. A breaking down of all this big language to simple colloquial terms. 'I’m just talking to you. I’m in this vaunted position. But like a priest explaining something from the Bible or something, I'm breaking it down for you so we can all have a common language and a common understanding.'"

Over on MSNBC, Chuck Todd insisted Biden is the anti-Trump: "He is the better angel president. Joe Biden believes – he’s eternally optimistic. He’s not cynical. The guy’s been in Washington so long you would think, you know, some of us are here too long and you become cynical. He’s never cynical. He still thinks the better angels exist."

MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt attempted to sum up: "It was not a campaign speech. It was not a politics first speech. It was an American speech."

This is nonsense. It was an attempt at unity, an attempt to sound like the anti-Trump, but it was politically calculated ...and bound to be overturned within hours, when divisive executive orders repealed the call for unity.

I suspect that most of the Democrats listening to this drivel thought this was normal.  It is normal for the media to praise Democrat politicians, even corrupt ones like Biden whose corruption they tried to coverup during the campaign, while heaping hostility toward a President who donated his salary and did not monetize the office.  This is just one more example of how untrustworthy most of the American media is.