“Shortly after Vice President Kamala Harris handed over the podium to President Biden on Thursday, dozens of attendees at a joint event simply stood up and left rather than listen to the retiring commander-in-chief. The rude demonstration was a stark demonstration of the enthusiasm gap among Democrats revved up by Harris’ sudden elevation as the party’s presidential nominee – after Biden regularly suffered low rally attendance replete with heckling,” the New York Post reports in the lede to their BREAKING news story titled “Crowd leaves joint Biden-Harris event early after VP hands off lectern to lame-duck prez,” flashed on a yellow banner atop all pages on their site.

If the takeaway from the story is supposed to be something besides “Cry more libs! Biden’s popularity is taking a BIG HIT going into the fall campaign season! The footage of this event doesn’t lie! No way he’s getting a second term now when his own voters are walking on him!” then we’d love to hear it. Like everything they write is in this instance is true and sure, it’s embarrassing to Biden.

We guess. But… You know… We don’t need to explain what the issue is here so much as raise the question of what the actual fuck drove this editorial decision. Is this like complicated grief or something playing out in real time for the Post’s readership? Why would a partisan media outlet want to do this to themselves and their audience? You can’t call it a “coping method” because it isn’t coping. It’s an act of spiritual and psychological self-harm also being abusively inflicted on readers.