After Thursday’s debate, conservative media are finding it hard not to cheer

In the hours after last week’s presidential debate, a video clip circulated showing Jill Biden carefully helping her husband off the stage.

The fragment spread quickly through conservative media, along with an emerging narrative about President Biden’s underperformance: that the debate was a wholesale confirmation of the alarm bells that have been ringing for years about his age.

Long before he took office, right-wing pundits repeatedly argued that Biden, now 81, was too frail for the job, showing videos of him falling off his bike, stumbling onstage or fumbling over his words during speeches.

On the occasions when Biden has exceeded expectations — such as the State of the Union address in March — conservative critics have suggested that he must have been using a performance-enhancing drug or, as former President Donald J. Trump bluntly put it in speeches leading up to last week’s debate, that he was “hyped up” on drugs.

But after Mr. Biden’s appearance before an audience of 51 million on Thursday, concerns about the president’s fitness became widespread. For many media voices on the right, it was apparently hard not to cheer.

“The media woke up yesterday,” Fox News host Brian Kilmeade said Friday morning. “They couldn’t believe how bad Joe Biden was doing. Why are they just now realizing it?”

He joined a chorus of conservative commentators who have lambasted the mainstream press, while patting themselves on the back, for its coverage of the president. The National Review, for example, published a series by Article to celebrate the fact that it was known all along that Mr. Biden had a problem.

“We told you, fools,” read the headline of a particularly damning story published Friday night.

Many right-wing media outlets seem so excited by the sense of vindication that they don’t know what to do next.

Some have chosen to take the narrative even further, and in recent days have focused on increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories about Biden and his campaign. These theories are based on the idea that his bid for a second term was not business as usual, but a fraud against the American public and a sinister case of elder abuse perpetrated on an unwitting figurehead.

“It has certainly stirred up the swamp,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist. “No matter what happens, the conspiracy theorists still think there is some great magician controlling politics behind the scenes.”

In a series of posts on the social media site X on Monday, Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, claimed to know from the inside that the Democratic elite had secretly conspired against Biden, claiming that a public endorsement of the president by former President Barack Obama was “disingenuous.”

Critic and novelist Walter Kirn, who hosted a debate night with journalist Matt Taibbi watched by 82,000 people, claimed the president was being targeted by the deep state.crowd hit” intended to embarrass him on national television and force him to leave the race against his own will.

Others, including influential podcast host Ben Shapiro, pointed the finger at Mrs. Biden, portraying her as a power-hungry latter-day Lady MacBeth who “insists her dementia-suffering husband stays in the race.”

And conservative talk show host Mark Levin joined a chorus of critics who have compared Mrs. Biden unfavorably to the wife of President Woodrow Wilson, who secretly took over many executive duties after her husband suffered a debilitating stroke in 1919. “Jill Biden is the Edith Wilson of our generation,” Mr. Levin said.

For days after the debate, it was hard to find conservative voices willing to speak up. Barrett Marson, a Republican campaign strategist, said it would be wise to do so, given the very public crisis facing Democrats.

“The debate doesn’t need any exaggeration,” Mr. Marson said. “The best thing you can do is just get out of the way and watch the meltdown.”

Still, there were a handful of conservative media voices willing to temper their joy, if only for a moment.

“I woke up feeling sad,” said Greta Van Susteren, a Newsmax anchor, posted on X on Friday morning. “I didn’t like watching an older man struggle for 90 minutes while the world watched.”