Bari Weiss is a refugee from the Leftmedia, so she knows how things work. And she saw in Thursday night’s debate the exposure of all the lies the media has pushed regarding Joe Biden’s fitness for office.

Rarely are so many lies dispelled in a single moment. Rarely are so many people exposed as liars and sycophants. [Thursday] night’s debate was a watershed on both counts.

The debate was not just a catastrophe for President Biden. And boy — oy — was it ever.

But it was more than that. It was a catastrophe for an entire class of experts, journalists, and pundits, who have, since 2020, insisted that Biden was sharp as a tack, on top of his game, basically doing handstands while peppering his staff with tough questions about care for migrant children and aid to Ukraine.

Anyone who committed the sin of using their own eyes on the 46th president was accused, variously, of being Trumpers; MAGA cult members who don’t want American democracy to survive; ageists; or just dummies easily duped by “disinformation,” “misinformation,” “fake news,” and, most recently, “cheapfakes.”

Cast your mind back to February, when Robert Hur, the special counsel appointed by the Department of Justice to look into Biden’s handling of classified documents, came out with his report that included details about Biden’s health, which explained why he would not prosecute the president.

“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur wrote. “It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

Can anyone doubt that characterization after watching Biden’s debate performance?

Given that the media spent the ensuing months casting doubt on that assessment, yes, Weiss had to go on with other examples.

“Telling people they didn’t see what they saw is not the way to respond to this.” That was Democratic operative Ben Rhodes’ reaction last night to the debate. The trouble is that’s precisely what the strategy has been for many, many months.

And, we might add, Rhodes’s entire career modus operandi.

But last night, many of the very people who say they are shocked — shocked! — by Biden’s showing were exactly the people who were covering for him.

Weiss concludes:

Those around the president — Jill Biden, certainly, but also all those savvy staffers — should have encouraged Biden to bow out gracefully after his first term. Because what happened last night was heartbreaking. It debased Biden as a man. It was also alarming — the person we saw onstage is our commander in chief. He holds the nuclear football. It wasn’t just Americans who watched his performance last night.

The Democrats talk a lot about “saving democracy.” But if you truly believe democracy is on the line in a race against Trump, the solution is as straightforward as it was before the debate clock started last night on CNN: Replace Biden.

Read the whole thing here.