FLASHBACK: NBC said Republicans were floating a 'conspiracy theory' when they said in 2023 Biden wouldn't be on ballot

With less than two weeks to go until the 2024 presidential election, the match-up between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris would have seemed like fantasy – or a blatant conspiracy theory – to much of the mainstream media because Joe Biden just had to run and there was no way he could be replaced.

NBC News made that point almost exactly a year ago, on Oct. 26, 2023, when it noted how Biden was securely in place for his reelection campaign. After all, he “announced in April that he is running for re-election. His campaign and its fundraising entities have a combined $91 million in the bank, and he has hired key political staffers to help helm his 2024 re-election campaign,” and of course, “[h]e has no serious opposition that threatens to kick him off his party's ballot.”

Ironically, the “unfounded conversation” that NBC noted was occurring “on the political right” in 2023 was the incredible theory that “Democratic power brokers will intervene at the last minute to replace a weakened 80-year-old Biden with someone else as the party’s nominee,” which is, of course, precisely what happened to Biden when former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stepped up and pushed the president out of the race.

“So here’s the scenario that I think is perhaps the most likely and most dangerous,” NBC News quoted Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) from his podcast. “In August of 2024, the Democrat kingmakers jettison Joe Biden and parachute in Michelle Obama. I view this as a very serious danger,” he said.

What made the idea of Biden being replaced by Obama – or anyone else – was the notion that it would be spearheaded by concerns about Biden’s cognitive decline, “centered largely on the thought that Biden is too old and not sharp enough mentally, is that there's a secret plan to replace Biden due to his health or other reasons by amorphous illuminati-type forces within the Democratic Party.”

"I feel like they’re grooming someone, and we all know it’s not Kamala [Harris]," Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) is quoted as saying in the article. "So I think they [Democrats] have a backup plan because every time I listen to the current president speak, I’m like, 'Is this getting harder?'" This came to reality when Biden almost immediately endorsed his vice president when he dropped out in July.

NBC reached out to Kevin Munoz, a spokesperson for the Biden campaign, who replied that “Republicans peddling blatantly false conspiracy theories is nothing new — it’s easier than telling the truth about their election-denying, abortion-banning, and Social Security-cutting platform. These sources would also have you believe we faked the moon landing and that Tupac is hanging out with Elvis on an island somewhere in the Caribbean."

"These lies don’t change the fact that Joe Biden will again beat MAGA Republicans and their twice-rejected agenda in 2024 as his party’s nominee for president," Munoz continued.

NBC did acknowledge that Republican criticism of Biden’s age was also shared by voters from both parties, citing an August 2023 Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll that found that 77 percent of respondents said Biden is “too old” for a second term. This included 69 opercent of Democrats. The poll also found that just 51 percent of the US adults thought then-77-year-old Trump, just three years younger than Biden, was too old to "effectively serve."