NEW YORK, NY — Journalists from media outlets around the country are reeling from shock after Biden's performance in the presidential debate, caught completely off guard by the President's steep mental decline.
"There were no warning signs. None," said MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough. "Up until the very moment the debate started, President Biden has been the picture of vitality and intelligence. He has never before lost his train of thought, stared into the abyss with his mouth gaping, mumbled incoherently for extended periods, or made nonsensical statements like 'We beat Medicare'. It's all so shocking - shocking, I tell you."
Members of the White House Press Corps, having never reported a single instance of Biden faltering in the past four years, were equally stunned. "Biden's debate performance was entirely out of the blue," explained Tyler Page of the Washington Post. "There were no pointers that his mental capacity was impaired in the slightest before the debate. I mean, I'm just thinking back over the past few months…D-Day…the G7 Summit…the Juneteenth concert…yeah, there's really just nothing that would indicate that he wasn't at tip-top performance leading into the debate. It was just so unlike Joe Biden"
At publishing time, journalists had been further flabbergasted to hear that the President had told several egregious lies during the debate, as he had always been completely honest up until that point.