Good morning. It is July 9th. It is a hot, hot morning in New York City. The air conditioner is off for the duration of the recording session, and this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca taking a look at the day and the news. The number one story on the front of this morning's New York Times, the most important piece of breaking news in the world, is that the incumbent president and presumptive nominee of a major political party is continuing to run for reelection. Or as the Times puts it, "refusing to exit, Biden denounces critics in party. In a letter and on TV, fiery reply to doubters, challenge me at the convention." "Refusing" is quite a word choice for someone declining to take an entirely unprecedented course of action. In effect, Michael D. Shear writes, "President Joe Biden decided to engage in a no -holds -barred fight with his allies for the world to see. He was at turns defiant, furious, indignant, exasperated, and dismissive. He insisted that he would not withdraw from the race, but accused those who have suggested he step aside of being routinely wrong about politics." There are any number of remarkable things about the decision to write this story and put it on page one, but maybe the most remarkable thing is that nowhere does the New York Times acknowledge that the New York Times is leading the campaign to try to force Biden out. What it describes as a fight against his allies is a fight in which the first voices calling for Biden to step aside did not come from any Democratic politicians at all, but from an assortment of New York Times columnists and the editorial board of the Times. After that, the news section of the Times launched into an ongoing campaign of saturation coverage on the question of whether Biden can continue as a candidate. When you take the jump on the front page story, you arrive inside the paper amid the stories. "First Lady visits three states to reassure," "Biden's appeal fails to quiet doubts and criticism," "Amid doubt, black leaders rally around Biden," "An aging Senate again looks the other way," and a pair of stories that stand out even further from the general clamor of the crusade, down at the bottom of page A15, there's "Parkinson's expert visited White House eight times in eight months. But why is unclear." 

The lead is "an expert on Parkinson's disease from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center visited the White House eight times in eight months from last summer through this spring, including at least once for a meeting with President Biden's physician, according to official visitor logs. The expert, Dr. Kevin Cannard, is a neurologist who specializes in movement disorders and recently published a paper on Parkinson's." The story goes on to say it was unclear whether Dr. Cannard was at the White House to consult specifically about the president or was there for unrelated meetings. Dr. Cannard's LinkedIn page describes him as supporting the White House Medical Unit for more than 12 years. His biography on Doximity, a website for health professionals, lists him as a neurology consultant to the White House Medical Unit and the physician to the president from 2012 to 2022, which would include the administrations of presidents Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump. 

The claim that a Parkinson's expert visited the White House eight times in eight months gets a lot less exciting when it turns out to be that the standing neurological consultant for the medical needs of the entire White House staff visited the White House. As for the frequency, records from the Obama administration when Mr. Biden was vice president show that Dr. Cannard made at least 10 visits in 2012, plus a family tour, four in 2013, one in 2014, four in 2015, and eight in 2016. 

Unless they're trying to make the claim that Joe Biden was getting treated for Parkinson's during the Obama administration, and that he was getting it done at the White House, rather than at the vice presidential residence at the Naval Observatory, the takeaway from those numbers is that the frequency of neurologist visits described in the story is completely in line with the pre -existing fluctuation in the number of neurologist visits to the White House from year to year. One of the most irritating things about the New York Times as an institution is that there's no way to distinguish the occasions when it's publishing an unpersuasive story because it has deeper information that it can't put in the paper, from the occasions where it just doesn't have the goods and it's bluffing.

Obviously someone at the Times believes that Joe Biden isn't just old and faltering, but that he has a secret case of Parkinson's. But what they put on the page doesn't come close to demonstrating that. And given the overall barrage of Biden coverage, it reads much more like they've just lowered their standards for publishing speculation. All they have for the readers is a circumstantial claim, and their own reporting shows that the circumstance itself isn't noteworthy. 

Then on page A16, there's a political memo. "President's strategy for reelection falters as focus stays on him." 

"From the outset of President Biden's reelection campaign," Reid Epstein writes, "the plan for winning was to make former president Trump so unpalatable that voters uneasy with the incumbent would vote for him anyway. but now Mr. Biden is stuck in a political tailspin, with an abysmal debate performance highlighting his inability to make a case against Mr. Trump and prompting a collective national hand -wringing about his ability to do his job, while an increasing number of House Democrats say he should leave the race. To get voters to focus on the threats posed by a second Trump administration, Mr. Biden's own allies say he first must escape his current doom loop and convince voters, even and especially fellow Democrats, that he is up to the job himself." 

There are two claims here. One is that the focus is staying on Biden, in an analysis piece, the active purpose of which is to keep the focus on Joe Biden. And the other is that Donald Trump cannot be focused on without Joe Biden leading the way. That brings us back to page one and the second news column. "Platform eases abortion stand to suit Trump. Document cements his control of GOP. Donald J. Trump told officials on Monday that he supports a new Republican Party platform, one that reflects his new position on abortion rights and swims down policy specifics across all areas of government." 

So the president who built the Supreme Court that overturned Roe vs. Wade, creating our current era of draconian anti -abortion laws in states across the country, has discovered that abortion is now a losing issue and is trying to reposition himself as a moderate. And the Times is taking that as a genuine new position and a sign of the moderation of his political approach. Five paragraphs down the story says, "the rest of the document reflects Mr. Trump's priorities as outlined on his campaign website. A hard line immigration policy, including mass deportations, a protectionist trade policy with new tariffs on most imports, and sections on using federal power to remove policies in academia, the military, and throughout the U .S. government put in place by what it describes as radical Democrats." 

Mass deportations, the roundup of at least 10 million people, gets stuffed in a subordinate clause. What are these policies in academia, the military, and the government that he's offering to purge? It doesn't say. Is there any reference to the Project 2025 controversies over the weekend, in which Trump began lying about not having any knowledge of the radical agenda that his closest aides had written? There is not. 

And this is the only story about Donald Trump that the Times saw fit to put in the newspaper.

That is the news. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to Indignity to keep us going. We are going to skip tomorrow's podcast, but if all goes well, we will talk again on Thursday.