There’s a debate right now about what the news media were doing before Joe Biden’s walking-dead debate performance versus after: Were they covering for the president? Were they in denial? Were they lying? Are they stupid?

Puffy media person Brian Stelter last week pretended to embark on a fact-finding expedition in search of answers, claiming that “the real story is far more complicated — and more interesting.”

No it’s not.

Democrats and the media work together, savagely, all of the time, and toward the same goal, which is at any moment some variation of “destroy the American middle class and the nuclear family.” Contrary to popular belief, the media don’t slavishly follow the orders of Democrat leaders or work solely to protect them from criticism. That’s only part of the work, and it can rapidly change when the goal is threatened. It’s a mutually beneficial partnership. Democrats give their media cohorts guidance on coverage. Simultaneously, the media steer Democrats with that coverage. So long as they’re all going in the same direction — toward their shared goal — they all get along.

The blackout coverage and cable news dialogue related to Biden’s plainly depleted mental acuity before the debate, followed by an immediate, hysterical week-long news cycle (and still going) on the topic, isn’t complex or something that anyone in Washington is seriously pursuing answers for. Everyone in the White House gets it and so does everyone in the media. They understand the swift change well, and there wouldn’t have been

Ignoring off-year elections produces its consequences — and Republicans are finding that lesson out the hard way.

On the same day Joe Biden made a campaign appearance in Madison, Wisconsin, the Badger State’s leftist-controlled Supreme Court arbitrarily authorized the use of ballot drop boxes in November’s election. The Friday decision reverses a 2022 ruling by the court’s then-conservative majority that determined the deployment of drop boxes in the 2020 election violated Wisconsin law and prohibited them from further use.

The leftist majority’s ruling — while contradictory to state law — is a big win for Democrats, who used the presumably “Zuckbucks“-funded boxes to push Biden across the finish line during the 2020 contest. While Wisconsin voters have since prohibited the use of “Zuckbucks” in elections, the high court’s reauthorization of drop boxes will undoubtedly be used by Democrat ballot traffickers during the November elections.

But it didn’t have to be this way.

While Republicans and conservative influencers were distracted in spring 2023 with the 2024 GOP presidential primary — months before candidates like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis jumped in the race — Democrats made flipping control of Wisconsin’s highest court a top priority.

As my colleague Matt Kittle recently reported, Democrat Janet Protasiewicz raised $14 million ahead of the April 2023 election, most of which came from the Wisconsin Democrat Party and out-of-state leftist mega-donors. Republican Dan Kelly raised a mere $2.6 million. This funding discrepancy doesn’t even take into account the major get-out-the-vote operations leftist groups conducted on

Project 2025, a suggested roadmap for a second Trump Administration pulled together by the Heritage Foundation, is a nearly 1,000-page document written by a bunch of think tankers and right-wing policy experts running the gamut of conservatism.

President Joe Biden says the document “should scare every single American.” Democrats, one strategist told the Washington Post, need to “instill fear in the American people.” Donald Trump and his surrogates are already distancing the candidate from the effort.

So, I decided to read it. Listen, it wasn’t easy. But the chances that Biden, or any other person fearmongering about it, understands what’s in it, is highly doubtful.

For starters, most of the Project 2025 “mandate” is just a compendium of long-held conservative wishes for government.

The Associated Press warns the effort champions a “dramatic expansion of presidential power.” Yet, nothing in Project 2025 is even on par with Biden’s unconstitutional loan “forgiveness” plan. The alleged presidential abuses the media lays out are well within the president’s power. They’re just policies Democrats happen to dislike.

Project 2025, we are warned, suggests the firing of as many as 50,000 federal workers — which is well within the purview of the president. It will never happen, unfortunately.

Project 2025 suggests eliminating the Department of Education and its “woke-dominated system of public schools.” Conservatives have been promising to get rid of the Department of Education since Ronald Reagan first ran for the presidency. It will never happen.

Project 2025 suggests prohibiting the FBI from “fighting