Journalist Alex Thompson blasts media at WH Correspondents’ Dinner for 'covering up' Joe Biden's decline

WASHINGTON, DC: The 2025 White House Correspondents’ Dinner is usually all glitz, glamour, and a few good roasts — but it looks like the Beltway media got a major reality check this year.

Reporters were forced to stare straight into the mirror over their handling of former President Joe Biden’s mental decline, especially after honoring a journalist who dared to call it out while everyone else looked the other way.  

Axios star reporter Alex Thompson brought the house down after snagging the prestigious Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence. Thompson, known for exposing the Biden administration’s not-so-little secret, used his acceptance speech to tear into the White House and his own colleagues for ignoring what was right in front of them.

NBC’s Kristen Welker introduced Thompson to a roaring crowd, quoting the judges, “Thompson’s aggressive reporting... revealed [that] the president’s cognitive decline was impacting his ability to do his job, information the White House tried to conceal.” 

Thompson didn't waste time after grabbing the mic. “President Biden’s decline and its coverup by the people around him is a reminder that every White House, regardless of party, is capable of deception," he said.

“Being truth tellers also means telling the truth about ourselves. We, myself included, missed a lot of this story. And some people trust us less because of it. We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows," Thompson declared.

Joe Biden’s behind-the-scenes turmoil

The elephant in the room was that Joe Biden’s decline wasn’t exactly news to those on the inside, the New York Post reported.

Members of the former Biden-Harris team have been peppered with tough questions lately, mainly about just how obvious Biden’s cognitive issues were long before the 2024 election disaster.

After months of ugly headlines and whispers, Biden was ultimately forced out of the race following a disastrous June debate where he appeared so frail he was practically whispering. Worse, he struggled to even follow his opponent’s arguments, sending Democratic lawmakers into full-blown panic over looming polls that predicted an electoral bloodbath.

Biden himself later admitted he wasn’t sure he could physically handle another term. Then-Vice President Kamala Harris had to step in and take the top of the ticket in July, and still suffered a brutal defeat across battleground states in November.

Meanwhile, Thompson had been one of the rare journalists waving red flags way before the wheels fell off. His scoops peeled back the curtain on how Biden’s inner circle bent over backward to hide the president’s age-related struggles.

Top aides whispered among themselves that the president was slipping, but publicly they kept the charade going until it became impossible to deny.

A moment of media soul-searching amid tensions with White House

Alex Thompson didn’t sugarcoat the media’s failure either. “I say this because acknowledging errors builds trust, and being defensive about them further erodes it," he explained. “We should have done better.”

He added, “I believe our mission is vital in a world where people are struggling to figure out what’s true, and people with power are not telling the truth. I also believe that this association has been, is, and will continue to be critical to that mission.”

The Axios reporter is gearing up to release a bombshell book on May 20 titled 'Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again', co-authored with CNN’s Jake Tapper.

This year’s WHCA dinner featured no comedian headliner, no feel-good yuks. The WHCA had planned to bring in late-night host Amber Ruffin, but scrapped those plans after she wanted to torch the Trump administration as a “bunch of murderers.”

Tensions between the White House and the WHCA are at an all-time high. Trump’s team is even reportedly meddling in the selection of pool reporters — a job that used to belong strictly to the WHCA.

Unsurprisingly, Trump and his top crew completely skipped the dinner, a break from tradition where the sitting president usually shows up to glad-hand and grin.

WHCA President Eugene Daniels tried to cool things down in his speech. “We journalists are a lot of things. We are competitive and pushy. We are impatient, and sometimes we think we know everything," he admitted, before adding, “What we are not is the opposition. What we are not is the enemy of people. What we are not is the enemy of the state.”