so gresham’s law operates bad journalism drives out good and the corporate press is almost inveteranly bad,

IOW, we don’t speak truth to power when those in power pay our salaries.
We speak truth to power only when there are no negative consequences for doing so.

Joe Biden was the only candidate who could still plausibly pretend to be moderate and ftherefore defeat Trump. Except everyone knew he had a corruption problem. So they hoped they could hide it with the basement campaign. When the laptop made that impossible, they used the intelligence agencies to bury the story. It’s difficult to believe that public knowledge that Biden had monetized the vice presidency by extorting 10s of millions from foreign interests would have failed to cost him the 10k or so voters in GA, WI and AZ,

We can only hope that the relatively persuadable members of their side may at least be open to questioning what once was unassailable (prominent example: Bill Maher).

You seem to think Johnson and the Republicans were part of a coverup of Biden’s decline. I’ve seen that opinion expressed elsewhere, as well.

But I think it’s misplaced. Plenty of GOP members were saying that Biden had declined cognitively. They were brushed off by the Democrats and the press. What’s more, Johnson certainly said it as well. That he didn’t tell the exact details of that particular story is irrelevant. It wouldn’t have mattered one iota.

This is what Johnson was saying in October of 2023, which I believe was even before that meeting took place:

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Thursday evening that President Biden is showing obvious signs of cognitive decline — hours after meeting the commander-in-chief for the first time as leader of the lower chamber of Congress.

“Do you see in Joe Biden a cognitive decline, and if so, is that a danger to the country?” Fox News host Sean Hannity asked the newly installed House speaker.

“I do. I think most of us do,” Johnson said. “This is not a personal slight to him. It has to do with age and acumen, and everyone’s different. Everyone ages differently.”

“Clearly, if you look at a tape of Joe Biden making an argument in the Senate Judiciary Committee a few years ago and you see a speech that he delivers now, there’s a difference,” he added. “Again, it’s not a personal insult to him. It’s just reality.”

Johnson, 51, met with the president and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) on Thursday to discuss Biden’s supplemental national security requests for $106 billion in aid to Ukraine, Israel, and other projects.

He spoke up and plenty of other Republicans in office spoke up. They were ignored.