About last year: PolitiFact, the independent fact-checking website run by the Poynter Institute, bestowed another odious distinction on President-elect Donald Trump. The organization dubbed a statement uttered by Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance the “Lie of the Year.”

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But was it the lie of the year?

Given the recent revelations about the extent to which the cognitive decline of President Joe Biden well known by his staff, and covered through them, at the beginning of his presidency, one would think that repeated statements otherwise could be worthy of “Lying” “The” Lying. ” year. “

The lie, sold at the request of the aid and the advisors of Biden, and sold through the press secretary of the White House, Karine Jean-Pierre, the similar decrease was founded on misinformation. Long before the Historic Cave of Biden in the presidential debate in June, most Americans expressed serious reservations about Biden’s ability to serve. When Newshouings pressed Biden’s media in those surveys, they insisted that the expected evidence of the president’s decline was manufactured through his political enemies. Jean-Pierre attacked the conservative media Thunderly, and Fox News in particular, for having circulated what he described as deceitful videos that seemed to show Biden in some way.

At the highest point of the Biden administration, the official word was: not his eyes are found. And for the maximum part, the main media bought it.

A recent report through the Wall Street Journal, which differs from other sales issues inherited by having thoroughly investigated the lie, obviously shows that Biden workers were involved with their decline related to age, not only in the last weeks of the 2024 campaign, however, however, since 2020. The newspaper describes Biden, who remains away from his closet and protected the American public, because he had intelligent and bad days, even at the beginning of his presidency. AIDS learned that it was occasionally in the morning, so they drove meetings later during the day. They also saw that they would lose the concentration if things last too much, so they asked the officials to stay short.

This has had genuine consequences. Rep. Adam Smith (D-Washington) had considerations about Biden’s planned withdrawal from Afghanistan, but couldn’t pick up the phone with him; The president simply wasn’t available. It was a bad day, what a smart day. The failed withdrawal from Afghanistan would later be noted as one of the most damaging messes of Biden’s presidency.

In retrospect, many news commentators are now adequate that Biden’s cognitive decline was horribly lower. The CBS News correspondent, Jan Crawford, admitted so much a revealing panel on this network:

Jan Crawford: The maximum underdeveloped story “would be, to me, Joe Biden’s apparent cognitive decline that has been undeniable. “

Duck Chasing meme: Why wasn’t it reported?

pic. twitter. com/nkgu6lcezn

– Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) December 29, 2024

In any case, describing the story as “little discolored” is an abundant euphemism. It was the biggest concealment of a president’s boundaries since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s reliance on a wheelchair. On the one hand, the complicity of the media in this lie is almost unimaginable according to the criteria of current contradictory coverage; On the other hand, Biden showed that it was imaginable to keep them in the dark and remain silent.

For this reason, the fiction that Biden can provide to the re -election and presidency of 4 years more deserves the lie of the year. No consultation was asked.

I’m joined by Amber Duke to talk about the dispute over MAGA’s motion on H-1B visas, the emerging media understanding that the Biden team lied to their ability to do so, and our most productive media in 2024.

Speaking of loose media, we launched our own YouTube channel!The screen will continue to be a component of the circle of relatives of reasons and is produced through the talented staff of reason television, so nothing else changes. But please stop at the new YouTube channel and click on the SUBSCRIBE button. We appreciate it!

And be on the lookout for an expansion of Free Media in 2025. We plan to deliver even more content with Amber Duke and other media friends from all across the political spectrum: left, right, center, and elsewhere.

It’s taken more than a year, but I have finally finished Agatha Christie’s entire Hercule Poirot catalog. I’ve listened to every single Poirot detective story, from The Mysterious Affair at Styles to Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case, as audiobooks during my daily gym sessions. Having completed the collection, what I am experiencing is mostly a sense of loss: I feel as if a beloved friend has passed away.

I have come to treasure Poirot very dearly: his fastidiousness, his boastfulness, his disdain for other detectives who run about gathering clues. Poirot is in many ways the anti–Sherlock Holmes. He carries no magnifying glass and seldom examines footprints. His modus operandi is to interrogate suspects and use the “little gray cells” to deduce characters’ motivations. This usually means that the solution to the mystery—typically revealed by Poirot, in grandiose fashion, during an assembly of all the major suspects—is likely to have been missed by the reader, though I did manage to guess the killer’s identity in a handful of cases.

The three most famous Poirot novels are Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Orient is somewhat overrated, but the other two deserve their reputations. If you only read one Poirot novel, Death on the Nile is an excellent choice. (I solved it, to boot.) Ackroyd is a fan favorite, but is best consumed after having gained some familiarity with Christie’s style; this makes the infamous plot twist in Ackroyd (don’t Google it!) much more enjoyable.

A few others I really enjoyed were: Peril at End House, Murder in Mesopotamia, Appointment With Death, and After the Funeral.

As a new year begins, I have made it my 2025 resolution to be more like Poirot—to treat others with outstanding courtesy and kindness, to take pride in a job well done, and to better organize my life using order and method. I invite readers to do the same.

Robby Soave is editor-in-Chief of Reason.

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