Trump death hoax: Speculation and spin overshadow facts: Bias Breakdown

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00:00Rumors circulated about President Trump's death.

00:03They were completely false.

00:05Still, partisan media used them as a launch pad

00:08to push their own narratives.

00:10We may never know why Donald Trump suddenly spent a week

00:14hiding entirely from the American public.

00:16And that absence, and you may have seen this over the weekend

00:19if you looked at any social media platform,

00:21prompted quite a wave of online speculation

00:24about the president's health and well-being.

00:26Where was all of the sudden panic

00:29during the last four years when Joe Biden was president?

00:32Missing in action almost always.

00:35The broader question we have here

00:37is how the media should cover a president's health.

00:40Because when partisan politics drive the narrative,

00:43objective journalism gets pushed aside.

00:46Welcome back to Bias Breakdown.

00:49Right-leaning media are taking this as an opportunity

00:52to criticize those on the left as hypocritical

00:55for not reporting on Biden's health.

00:58If you want to go ahead and turn off about 80%

01:01of your remaining audience,

01:02writ large, I mean, meaning Democrats,

01:05dive in hard on Trump health and ignore Biden's

01:08and see how that goes.

01:10Yes, just showing the hypocrisy.

01:13Donald Trump takes three days off Labor Day weekend

01:16and plays golf, which we saw him do.

01:18And suddenly, according to the media, Donald Trump's dead,

01:22which is very strange after four years of the legacy media

01:25not saying a word about Joe Biden's health.

01:29Joe Biden, who went months at a time

01:31without taking questions from the media.

01:34And it's not like Trump wasn't seen.

01:35He was seen going to golf every day.

01:38Biden went days without being seen.

01:40They never asked if he was alive.

01:42Meanwhile, left-leaning media highlighted health concerns

01:46that helped fuel the conspiracies.

01:48Even Trump's allies have been speculating about his poor health.

01:52But while the online speculation over the long weekend

01:54turned out to be just that, the growing curiosity

01:56about Trump's well-being might be at least a bit understandable,

02:00considering that this White House has not given us

02:02any reason to trust what it says on just about anything,

02:05especially when it comes to the health of a man who is

02:08the oldest to ever take the oath of office.

02:10All weekend long, where's Donald Trump? How come we're not seeing him?

02:13Bottom line is, he's clearly got some health issues.

02:16We know this administration is not forthcoming pretty much about anything.

02:20It's really disconcerting.

02:21The president has been very vocal with press all the time.

02:24I think in August, he spent 26 days doing public events or talking to press.

02:28So to go down for six days and just have a slew of true social posts

02:31that are very chaotic and people can't follow all of them,

02:34it's very concerning.

02:35And I think that people, it raises questions.

02:36Be taking a few days down in August, which is normal for presidents to do,

02:40or there could be actually something wrong.

02:41The problem is, is we don't know and they're not being transparent about it.

02:44So that's the media noise around the story.

02:46Right leaning outlets mostly skip over Trump's recent health concerns

02:51or bury it as an afterthought while shifting the focus to liberal hypocrisy.

02:56That's considered by news bias monitors as biased by omission and framing,

03:01pushing a partisan takeaway instead of laying out all the facts for audiences to decide.

03:07But the left had its own bias here too, using the moment to fuel speculation about the president's

03:13health. Again, the focus of the story shifting depending on the voices you heard.

03:18Here's what some popular podcasters on the left were saying.

03:21But now to the heart of the issue, do they know something we don't know?

03:25I'm still using my medical brain and it's telling me that in this almost 80 year old man,

03:31there's something else going on.

03:32And so the question arises, is he having mini strokes?

03:35You got a lot of theories out there right now about his health.

03:38Heart failure, kidney disease, liver issues, dementia. We need to know the truth.

03:45In other words, that maybe there is an actual health crisis of some kind,

03:48or there was some kind of incident over the past few days.

03:51And I can't help but think that there's something really insidious going on.

03:55This idea that Trump is sick isn't debatable. It's obvious.

04:00When you hear things like this could mean, or it might mean,

04:04that's subjective language and not objective reporting.

04:08That's considered something called speculation. And it slides into sensationalism,

04:13another form of media bias, as it steers audiences toward believing there's some bigger cover up

04:19around the president's health without any hard evidence. In the end, both sides are doing the

04:25same thing, straying from objective journalism, one by deflecting the other by speculating.

04:33This is a sensitive topic and newsrooms across the country are having internal editorial discussions

04:38on how to handle it. We're having those discussions here too. And we did report on what we know.

04:45Trump has bruising on his hands. That's a fact. He has used some sort of concealer to try and cover

04:51those bruises. That's also a fact. The White House says the bruising is because of handshaking

04:57and the use of aspirin, which has a side effect of bruising. That's an official statement. CNN's chief

05:04medical correspondent even said what we're seeing and what we're being told tracks.

05:10My point being is that it tracks. We see this, what you're seeing on the screen there,

05:14they call it chronic venous insufficiency. That tracks. That makes sense. What we've been told by

05:19his doctors seem to make sense. They say that the bruising on the back of the hand as a result of

05:24aspirin use, lots of trauma to the hand from handshaking, they say. Taking a look at what are known

05:29as the big three broadcast networks, we found coverage of Trump's death hoax and health concerns

05:35from ABC and NBC. But scouring CBS's website, YouTube page, and search engines, we couldn't

05:42find any coverage from CBS over the renewed attention to Trump's health and hand bruises.

05:48An editorial decision? Not to talk about it at all. But ABC News disagreed and criticized the media

05:56industry at large over any silence to the story. ABC wrote news outlets face serious questions about

06:03how to handle the story much like they did with Biden. The physical signs that have been pointed

06:08out online should trigger serious probes into the president's health. Some critics like historian

06:15Garrett Graff said it was puzzling that many in the media hadn't treated it like a news story.

06:21Graff wrote you'd think reporters would be falling all over themselves to dig deeper right now. Clearly

06:27there's enough smoke to warrant at least a major story and a major outlet investigating whether there

06:33is fire. Every newsroom and every journalist will hold themselves to different ethical standards and

06:40each can justify their own reasoning. CBS could be justified because the death rumors were just that,

06:47online rumors. And the health concerns raised aren't new from what we learned over the summer,

06:53just that the bruises are still present. ABC News and others could justify their coverage by arguing

07:00that any concern about a president's health is information the public deserves to know and the

07:06press should stay on top of. But that is also an interesting thought. Transparency about a president's

07:13health. Is that something we're owed? It's a question worth pausing on because that is a question that

07:20could be debated. We're talking about the leader of the free world. The US government has before felt

07:25justified in concealing a president's health to project strength to the outside world. If history

07:32tells us anything, it's that presidents have a track record of hiding health issues. Woodrow Wilson

07:39suffered a stroke in 1919 and his wife reportedly took over many of his presidential duties at the time.

07:45Franklin D. Roosevelt struggled with polio and later heart disease, but he was rarely shown to the

07:51public in his wheelchair. John F. Kennedy had Addison's disease, but kept the diagnosis a secret

07:57to uphold a young and vigorous image. Impacts from Dwight Eisenhower's heart attack and stroke

08:04were largely seen as being downplayed. There's been much debate over whether Ronald Reagan's

08:09Alzheimer's battle began while he was in the White House or if it was after he left that signs started

08:15to show. Similarly, with Biden's recent stage four prostate cancer diagnosis, there was speculation

08:21the diagnosis was hidden while he was president, although Biden's medical team and Biden himself

08:27denied those claims. When it comes to President Trump's health, the patterns in coverage are clear.

08:32Right-leaning media largely deflect any conversation, shifting the focus away from Trump's health and

08:39onto liberal hypocrisy over Biden's health. Left-leaning media swing the other way, often speculating

08:46about serious health problems without solid evidence. Either way, the framing pushes audiences toward a

08:54narrative, leaving little room for objectivity or for viewers to draw their own conclusions from the facts.

09:01In the end, both sides downplay or speculate about a president's health when it's politically

09:07convenient for them. And that's your bias breakdown.

09:12Thanks for watching this week's episode. Remember, if you miss one of our stories one week,

09:17it's easy to catch up. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, along with other podcast platforms.

09:23Just search bias breakdown and we should pop up. You can also join in on the conversation if you have

09:29thoughts about this week's episode by finding us over on YouTube. Thank you to Ian Kennedy and Allie

09:35Caldwell for the video edits and graphics help for this week. And as always, thank you so much for

09:41watching. I'll see you next time.

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