Biden’s Mind, Tapper’s Goldmine: The Ethical Collapse of Election-Year Journalism

In this episode, we look at the State of Utah’s Health Department-commissioned review, which confirmed the safety and mental health benefits of gender-affirming treatments for youth. Despite its clear findings, the review was dismissed by lawmakers determined to uphold a state ban, highlighting a disturbing political hypocrisy. This resistance to science in favor of ideological control exposes a deeper moral failure among those in power who choose to ignore expert guidance to further political ends.

On the national political stage, we analyze the 2024 election and President Biden’s decision to endorse Kamala Harris. The media's fixation on Biden’s mental fitness, as detailed in Jake Tapper’s book, reflects a shallow narrative more interested in spectacle than substance. We critique the media’s failure to prioritize pressing issues—like civil rights and healthcare—in favor of sensationalist coverage about President Biden while President Trump has escaped the same kind of drum beat over his mental issues.

Full Show Notes & Links Used

Chapters

• 0:50 Utah Gender Affirming Care Report supports care for Trans kids
• 12:57 Biden's Brain found by Jake Tapper

Transcript

[0:04] In this episode, we learn about the worst kept secret during the 2024 election and the CNN anchor who discovered it for a cheap shot book deal.

[0:15] Then we look at a Utah study commissioned by religious bigots that didn't give them the answers they wanted so that they could kick trans kids again. Can't we all just think of the religious bigots? My name is Doug Berger, and this is Secular left.

[0:49] Back in early 2023, the Utah legislature got their governor, Spencer Cox, to sign a bill that placed an indefinite moratorium on doctors providing puberty blockers and hormone therapy to trans kids with gender dysphoria, which we've seen across the board in all these religiously conservative legislatures, Ohio included, although the Ohio law is still in the courts, even though they set aside the injunction. So it's still illegal to get gender-affirming care in Ohio, but it is in court right now. And so in Utah, they actually decided to do a moratorium, and order the Utah Health Department to commission a systematic review of medical evidence around the treatments with the goal of producing recommendations for the legislature on whether to lift the moratorium.

[1:57] And Governor Cox said, at the time, we sincerely hope that we can treat our transgender families with more love and respect as we work to better understand the science and consequences behind these procedures.

[2:10] Now, before I get into what they found, research on transgender gender affirming care is not, there's not a lot of it. That is one of the things, I mean, it's been studied. There's been periodic papers published. There was even one paper that had to be retracted because it was wrong and the methodology was wrong. Um, there was, I just learned recently that there was a German, uh, scientific study where they actually did some, uh, regular scientific work on it that, uh, agreed that gender affirming care was needed. And I'll have a link to that article. I think it was Erin in the morning, her, uh, um, Substack newsletter talked about it and I'll have a link into it. So the state of Utah got together a panel of people to review all of whatever data they could find, and it was compiled over a two-year period by the Drug Regimen Review Center at the University of Utah.

[3:24] Now, there was a recent report within the last few weeks of the federal government releasing a report on the same subject, but it was bought and paid for by the Manhattan Institute, which is an anti-trans group. They basically just cut and pasted the Manhattan Institute report. So we're not going to accept that, but this is a different one. It says...

[3:50] It says the names of the Utah Report's contributors are actually disclosed on a more than 1,000-page document. And it also says if they have any conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical industry. And it says the authors write, The consensus of the evidence supports that the treatments are effective in terms of mental health, psychosocial outcomes, and the induction of body changes consistent with the affirmed gender and pediatric gender dysphoria patients. The evidence also supports that the treatments are safe in terms of changes to bone density, cardiovascular risk factors, metabolic changes, and cancer. It is our expert opinion that policies to prevent access to and use of gender-affirming hormone therapy for treatment of gender dysphoria in pediatric patients cannot be justified based on the quantity or quality of medical science findings or concerns about potential regret in the future, and that high-quality guidelines are available to guide qualified providers in treating pediatric patients who meet diagnostic criteria.

[5:01] And it says, in the second part of the review, the authors look specifically at long-term outcomes of patients who started treatment for gender dysphoria as minors. It said, overall, there were positive mental health and psychosocial functioning outcomes, while gender-affirming treatment showed a possibly protective effect in prostate cancer in transgender men and breast cancer in transgender women. There was an increase in some specific types of benign brain tumors. These are increased mortality risk in both transgender men and women treated with hormonal therapy, but more so in transgender women. Increased risk of mortality was consistently due to increase in suicide, non-natural causes, and HIV AIDS. Patients that were seen at the gender clinic before the age of 18 had a lower risk of suicide compared to those referred to as an adult. So let me repeat that. All right. They looked at all of the studies that are available, all the scientific literature that's available, and they found that although there was increased mortality risks in both transgender men and transgender women, that increased risk was consistently due to increase in suicide, non-natural causes, and HIV AIDS. Not from the puberty blockers, not from the treatment itself.

[6:26] And submitted with the review was a set of recommendations compiled by advisors from the state's medical and professional licensing boards, University of Utah, and the Utah nonprofit hospital system on steps the state legislature could take to ensure proper training among gender-affirming care providers in the event it decides to lift the moratorium.

[6:47] But you know the story. You know how this is going to go. The legislators behind the ban are already dismissing the findings that they asked for. In response to the questions from the Salt Lake City Tribune, Representative Katie Hall, who co-sponsored the 2023 ban, issued a joint statement with fellow Republican state Bridger Bolender, the chair of the legislature's Health and Human Services Interim Committee, that dismissed the study's findings. We intend to keep the moratorium in place, they told the Tribune. Young kids and teenagers should not be making life-altering medical decisions based on weak evidence. So, you know, that was going to go that way. You know it was going to go that way. And what I want to say about this, okay, is adding a little personal story.

[7:38] I had a sister. Her name was Lisa. Um, she unfortunately died when she was 40 years old. Oh, almost 22 years ago in 2003 from cancer. She had cervical cancer as a matter of fact, but she was mentally disabled. Um, she wasn't mentally disabled, like non-functioning. She could function. She just couldn't, like, read very well. I remember growing up trying to get her, she wanted to get her driver's license because she wanted to drive. And she could never get past the written test. And so she never got her driver's license. And that really, really hurt her. She was really upset about that. And I bring her up. She's mentally disabled. She received disability payments from Social Security. She had a child.

[8:42] And the thing is that my sister, who is mentally disabled or was mentally disabled, had more rights to make medical decisions for herself than these religious bigots allow for transgender kids in consultation with their family and their doctor. Let that sink in. My sister was mentally disabled. And she could decide whether or not to go to a doctor, whether or not to take any medication. And we could never force her to do any of it. In fact, it was against the law. It was against the law for her family to force her to go to the doctors. We would have had to go to the courts and rule her incompetent and become her guardian in order for her to get medical treatment that we thought that she deserved. The same with having her baby. There was many people in her family that didn't want her to have a child. We couldn't force her to get an abortion. That was her decision. She wanted to keep the baby.

[10:02] So, you know, again, let that sink in. A woman with a mental disability has far more health treatment rights than transgender kids. And I think that that is disgusting. That it is that way. You know, these religious zealots, these religious bigots, ignore reality in order to push their religious bigotry agenda. And these are people that claim to be Christians. You know, I think that they need to go back to divinity school and learn about the teachings of Jesus. I'm an atheist, and I know more about the teachings of Jesus than some of these holier-than-thou people. Including a certain state legislator who likes to make fun of transgender people on Twitter.

[11:00] That is gross and disgusting. And all it is is these kids, they want to be who they want to be. They want to love who they want to love. They just want love and support. And that is too much for these religious zealots to do. So I am going to send this article and this report to that particular state legislator. And I'm going to ask him, and he happens to be, he claims to be a minister of a church. And I don't know about his other members of his church, but I wouldn't accept any religious teachings from him because he doesn't get it. He doesn't subscribe to it. He doesn't follow it.

[11:52] And there's a lot of people that are going to get hurt. You know, and I get regulating it. And this Utah study, they had some really good recommendations that are just common sense, like making sure people are certified and other things like that. But a lot of these doctors that provide these gender-affirming care, they are good people and they follow general medical ethics. And so if it's a medical treatment that's found to be beneficial, the state should just butt out of it. And they don't because they're bigots. And that needs to change.

[12:44] For more information about any of the topics covered in this episode, check out our show notes at secularleft.us.

[12:57] One of the things that I noticed when we were coming up to the election, the 2024 election, was that President Biden made the right call to drop out in, I believe it was July, July that he dropped out and tapped Kamala Harris to take over.

[13:21] And unbeknownst to some political pundits, both on the right and on the left, Harris did decent for the chaos that came with Biden dropping out and trying to ramp up a big, huge election with only a few 90, I think it was 90 days to go. She did good. She didn't win. But Trump barely won the popular vote. Like less than 1%, 1%, less than 1%, which is not a mandate. They had a three-seat majority in the House, the Republicans did, and a two- or three-seat majority in the Senate. So that was after all this hubbubaloo about Biden's mental stability and health and about the constant drumbeat about inflation and rising prices and bad economy that didn't match the actual reality of things. You know, and I talked about this before, that poll after poll after poll of people said the economy sucked. But there was low unemployment, except for some inflationary pressure left over from the pandemic.

[14:51] You know, prices weren't that bad. The supply chain stuff had been wrapped up. Biden passed the infrastructure bill. And it was putting people to, people were getting put to work. And the United States was being lauded worldwide for having the best economy in the world.

[15:14] But yet, if you watched the media, the corporate media, it was a drumbeat of this economy sucks, this economy sucks, driven by Trump and his sycophants. Saying that the Biden crime family had ruined the economy, blah, blah, blah, whatever. The other thing that they had to drumbeat about back then was Biden being too old and not having all his faculties together, mispronouncing people's names or misidentifying people, saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, or seeming to stop his gait when he was trying to walk. And, you know, people were concerned.

[16:02] So, here in May, May of 2025, CNN anchor Jake Tapper and some guy from Axios, which is another news organization I don't care for, published a book. And it was bombshell, supposedly bombshell after bombshell, talking about how Biden's mental decline was hidden by his inner circle, where he was propped up and kept running until he couldn't run anymore, until the jig was up and he had to quit. And how that brought us Donald Trump, gave us Donald Trump.

[16:48] And Jake Tapper was flogging this book. The problem is he wrote a book about a cover-up that didn't exist because everybody knew Biden was too old and too infirmed by this time. You know, compared to when he was vice president with Obama till, you know, 23, 24 was like night and day. You could tell. You know, and, and I was, I was not upset with him for running again. I wish he wouldn't have saying that he was running for reelection because he had started the 2020 campaign saying, you know, I'm running to save us from Trump. And once I get into office and I get elected, I'm only going to serve one term. And then I'm going to, you know, bow out to, uh, younger people or other people in the, in the party. I'm like, great. Wasn't my call. I'm not, you know, I'm not a party person. Didn't matter to me, but that's what he promised. So that was what a lot of people were upset about was that he had promised to only run for, to, to serve one term and then he was going to get out. And then he decided that he was going to get back in. And as I said, Tapper wrote this book with some guy from Axios who said they talked to dozens of people. And it kind of reminded me of the Bob Woodward books.

[18:17] He had one on George W. Bush. He had one on Trump One and had inside knowledge and stuff like that. And the problem I have with these books...

[18:30] Is they're reporting, they're putting things in these books that should have been, well, in Tapper's case, the stuff that they're putting in the book, everybody knew about. But, like, Woodward's book and some other people write these tell-all books about the administration, and they're giving secrets and telling behind-the-scenes stuff that people should have known about at the time that it happened.

[18:58] You know, these news people are writing these books and going on these book tours for reportage that they should have done for their regular job. And so, you know, I'm already cross about that. But like I said, Biden's mental facilities, mental faculties, he lost a step. And you could really tell, and I really saw it in that June debate, that he really sucked at. They blamed jet lag, which probably was the case. Uh, there was another thing, um, he did a, uh, rally or not a rally, but like a panel discussion with president Obama in California where president Obama had to help him off the stage because he was so exhausted. I think he, I think that was mainly his problem. He's just so exhausted. He's a set, you know, 78 year old man and he's got a lot of problems. And then we find out later, just before this book came out, this Tapper book, that Biden has prostate cancer and it spread to his bones.

[20:15] So then you have people on the right saying, well, when did he know about that? And why weren't we told about that when he first knew it? And things like that, which is neither here nor there because Trump won. Trump's in the White House. Right.

[20:32] But this self-serving book, this Jake Tapper self-serving book, is just a prime example of the corporate media. It's exactly what they did. And I'm thinking he wrote the book. They started writing this book probably on the assumption that either Biden was going to win re-election or that Harris was going to win. Because that's what the media does. in corporate media is they go after the powers that be. The current, not always, but, you know, well, especially if they're Democrats, they go after them. And so that's what I'm assuming. And they got probably thrown off their game when Trump won.

[21:17] Because we know Trump is almost as bad as Biden was. The only thing that Trump doesn't have that Biden has is frailty, where he shuffles and needs help walking. Donald's not at that point yet, but the STDs or lead or syphilis or whatever that is infecting his brain has infected his brain. And we saw that, I'm recording this, shortly after Memorial Day 2025, and he gave a commencement speech at West Point wearing a MAGA hat, for one thing, which is an offense towards veterans and people in the military, wearing a political hat. And then he went off the script and was talking about this guy that invented Levittown, the Levitt thing, and talking about trophy wives and yachts and bullcrap like that. And then in one other part of his speech, he talks about how he rebuilt the military in four months after Biden destroyed it and that they got rid of the distracting DEI and woke stuff, which isn't true at all. And he just went off the rails.

[22:40] And then he goes to Arlington National Cemetery for the Memorial Day observance and gives a little speech bitching about the 2020 election again and how they stole it from him and he should have won it and the people involved. And then he goes on a rant about judges and this is what he does. And the other thing, too, what the people in the White House have been doing, have been purging transcripts of his speeches off the White House website. So you can't go back and see how off the rails he gets. And so what they're going to do is they're going to instead put up selected video clips. So you know it's going to be only when he's being coherent and talking on point and not these wild tangents that he goes on. You know, I want to see Jake Tapper write a book about that stuff. But anyway, so back to Biden's mental acuity. As I said, it was the worst kept secret. If it was a secret, it wasn't. One of the people on the left that I follow is David Sirota, and he does the Lever newsletter. He was talking about this in July.

[24:01] Talking about the people around Biden trying to keep him in the race. And he had a post on the lever on July the 2nd. It says, is this really how it all ends? Biden's blackmail strategy relies on you thinking there's no alternative, even though there is. And it talks about him dropping out, wanting him to drop out, Biden drop out and have an actual primary. And I think he also talks about the guy that did try to primary him getting frozen out by the Democratic Party because the Democratic Party was trying to protect him.

[24:43] Now, I don't fault the Biden administration from doing that because they're like, here's this crazy man, Trump, who's obviously a convicted felon trying to get elected president so he doesn't go to jail. You know, people won't vote for that. Well, they didn't think that the corporate media would play a hand in that, which they did. I mean, every night in that year, 2024, every night before Biden eventually drops out, especially after that disastrous June debate, every night they had it on the news. When's he going to drop out? He should drop out. When are they going to force him out? And what are they going to do? They're going to have a primary. They're going to have a convention, whatever. So Sirota was talking about this then.

[25:40] Then after Joe Biden withdrew from the race, David Sirota had an article in the Jacobin website said Biden's departure presents an opportunity for the Democrats. And it was a cool headline. Joe Biden has political machine damaged the Democratic Party by delaying his delaying his withdrawal. The Democrats can still recover from this crisis, but only if they don't repeat their past mistakes. The problem is, and I talked about this before, I didn't want to see Biden quit because I thought he was the best candidate instead of Trump. You know, if you're running a campaign, which they were, of anyone but Trump, Biden was the person. He was an incumbent. He had good economic numbers, even though the corporate media wouldn't state that or cover that. They just covered the bad stuff all the time, constantly.

[26:41] And then when he quit, withdrew from the race, and he anointed Kamala Harris, I approved of that. I thought that was a great move because she could take all that campaign money, they would just transfer it to her, and she would run on what Biden was going to run on. And you know this is not for this particular segment i'm probably going to talk about this in a different episode but um she started running a great campaign she raised a billion dollars she had sellout crowds at her rallies that made trump's route uh rallies look pitiful, and it was just driving Donald nuts. That was all great. And then she lost. And the recriminations were swift and legendary that they shouldn't have done it. They should have had a primary. They should have had a stronger candidate. That's BS. They had a strong candidate.

[27:46] But like I said, it's how they ran the campaign later that kind of messed things up for Kamala. But I digress. So we're talking about the worst kept secret. What I'm going to do is I'm going to play this clip from The Daily Show from May the 19th, where Jon Stewart's talking about the worst kept secret in politics. And the subject was Jake Tapper's book. And so I think this really gets to the point that I'm making that it was the worst kept secret. I happen to disagree with him on some of his conclusions, but I want you to hear that. So let's play this. And I understand the excitement over an insidious Democratic cover-up about Joe Biden's mental decline. The thing is, though, it was a terrible cover-up because we all f***ing knew. All of us knew. There was no cover-up poll after poll showed vast majorities of the public thought biden was too old and too out of it to run again dean phillips mounted an entire primary campaign because of it i really don't know if that's dean phillips.

[29:06] Along with most of the public knew that it was a bad idea for biden to run we knew it and that's what's so hilarious about politicians. The cover-up doesn't work when everyone knows you're lying. And everyone knows you're lying, the tell is, when you're so over the top about what you don't want to tell the truth about. Joe Biden is incredibly competent and he's incredibly effective. This is a man who is sharp, who is on top of his game. He has more energy than I do. He works us all under the table. I can't even keep up with him. Three hours on photo lines on three events a day, then giving speeches. Are you kidding? I mean, come on! That's insane! Three hours on photo lines, three events a day, that's nine hours of photo lines! And then giving speeches? And then at night, fighting crime? I have said too much! Come on!

[30:14] They used to say, it's not the crime, it's the cover-up. But it's starting to feel like politics is all cover-up. Crime or not, in an attempt to hold on to power, political actors do anything they can to project a reality distortion field. When all known evidence is to the obvious contrary, and the media tasked with covering them has somehow ended up inside the bubble with them. So for those of you watching at home who might like to know what the reality of what they're hiding about our current president would be, look not to the Democrats. Look not to the media. Look to the president's political allies, because their hyperbole is the indictment. Trump is one of the most transparent presidents of all time. The bravest, toughest man in the world. Enormous compassion. He's only been bound to we, the people. It's frankly ridiculous that anyone in this room would even suggest that President

[31:14] Trump is doing anything for his own benefit. Nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought. One of the most moral leaders we've had. To his pure honesty. The most ethical American I know.

[31:27] Tapper's 2031 book, it's gonna be lit! And that was from The Daily Show, May the 19th, 2025. And it was a strong segment, but I've had my problems with Jon Stewart. He tends to do the both-siderism stuff a little bit too much. And I disagree with him on some of his conclusions there at the end of the piece. I don't think that there was a cover-up. I don't think there was a cover-up. I think that they were staff members that were fighting for their boss and supporting their boss. And they weren't telling the truth, which is true. But it wasn't betraying the United States. It wasn't trying to subvert democracy. They weren't hiring Fox News hosts who have absolutely no experience in governing, you know, things like that. They just didn't.

[32:34] And just the fact that he had those multiple clips of Biden administration people rebutting what the corporate media was saying shows you how much of a drumbeat that was. And you don't see that with Trump. I'm sorry, you just don't. You know, some of these other shows like Rachel Maddow and some of the stuff on MSNBC and some of the blogs I read, they point out all the gaffes and derangement that Trump goes through. But you never hear about that talked about on the corporate media, the broadcast news. One of the things that Sirota wrote, and he's been a critic of Biden. He was a critic of Biden through his whole administration. One of the pieces that he wrote was for an opinion piece for The Guardian back in April of 2022.

[33:33] And it says, Americans believe nothing is getting better. Biden feeds that delusionment, says as his poll numbers crater, Biden appears to be offering no course correction. He still hasn't signed a stack of potentially wildly popular executive orders on matters ranging from debt cancellation to drug pricing. And then he makes an allusion to Biden being like the Joker in the movie, The Joker. Says he speechifies about the need to address crisis. He makes wars. He promises policy reforms that his own agencies decline to implement. And all these are valid. Most of them are valid points.

[34:11] Biden promised an immediate cancellation of a minimum of $10,000, a federal student loan debt, which he has an executive order to do, but he's refusing to do it. Well, he did do it, and it got overturned by the courts. So, you know, some of this stuff that Sirota talks about, he ended up did do. And it says, as his poll numbers did crater, even though the economy was good, which is amazing. I mean, it just shows you how influential corporate media and the right wing can be when they want to push the negative narrative.

[34:51] You know, because none of the data, none of the actual data pointed to him being a bad executive. And yet everybody thought that he sucked. His poll numbers were in the tank or cratered.

[35:07] The midterm elections however and this was in 2022 and it said that uh it says economic and this is an article from the economics observatory.com it says economic conditions can be important in predicting midterm performance by the president's party again these did not work in the democrats favor in november 2022 although unemployment was near record lows one survey of American consumers found that close to 60 percent reported that they were spending less due to unaffordable prices caused by inflation. Further, those surveyed were found to have heard an ever increasing trickle of news about rising prices. So even though President Biden's approval ratings fell steadily over the course of 2022, one study has attributed the decline to disenchantment among progressive voters. That is the very group the Democrats had to turn out to stem the projected Republican gains in that election. It says, for much, but not all of 2022, many people believe that the Republicans would see decisive gains at both the state and federal levels in the November elections of 2022. This assertion was backed by over 60 years of analysis of determinants of midterm election outcomes.

[36:31] Research points to a surge and decline theory which suggests the president's party suffers losses, declines, and midterm elections. This is because it lacks the pull, the surge, that successful high-profile campaigns provide.

[36:46] In the absence of a popular president to vote for, or as was the case with Donald Trump, an incumbent president, many wanted to vote against, many Democrats who were mobilized and contributed to President Biden's victory in 2020 were expected to sit on the sidelines in 2022. Anyway, so they had this drumbeat about how Biden sucked, and the Republicans were just going to wipe the floor with him in 2022. Unfortunately, there was no red wave. Republicans did take the House, but they still underperformed. They only won it by like three seats, and the Democrats held on to the Senate, at least for the time being.

[37:36] One of the things that they talk about is that the Republicans were so enthralled by Trump that they nominated bad candidates for some of these races, like Herschel Walker and Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania and some of those other people. And it said that Biden's approval rating at the time hovered around 41%. And a majority of Democrats polled said they'd prefer someone else to be the party's nominee. But one thing Biden did have going for him was the calendar. The reluctance of Democrats to do anything that might hurt him, and by extension, the party ahead of the midterms. And you saw that with the general election as well. No, they just didn't want to hurt him. But that was the thing is these Republicans were supposed to pick up all these seats and take over Congress, and they failed to do it. But I am not interested in reading. I saw some excerpts of Jake Tapper's book. I just think that it was a waste of paper, or in this case, a waste of digital space to publish it. It's not telling us anything new.

[38:51] Biden's mental decline was obvious to everybody, even if you barely watch the news. But the thing is, the corporate media did their job, and that's why Trump is president right now. They poisoned the well so badly that Trump squeaked in. Even after everybody told everybody what exactly was going to happen. And so far, Trump has pretty much done everything that he said he was going to do. And he's tanked the economy already. He's fired a bunch of people and other things. So anyway, so I'm like John Stewart says at the end of that clip that I played, You know, he's waiting with bated breath for Jake Tapper's next book about Trump. And so am I.

[39:52] Thank you for listening to this episode. You can check out more information, including links to sources used, in our show notes on our website at secularleft.us. Secular Left is hosted, written, and produced by Doug Berger, and he is solely responsible for the content. Send us your comments, either using the contact form on the website, or by sending us a note at comments at secularleft.us. Our theme music is Dank and Nasty, composed using Amplify Studio. See you next time.

[40:42] Music.