President Joe Biden’s performance at Thursday night’s first presidential debate thoroughly discredited his many defenders in the press and in the Democratic party who have consistently downplayed concerns that he might not be fit for the job, and have even gone so far as to publicly attack reporters — and the Biden Justice Department — for suggesting otherwise.
Throughout his presidency, Biden has appeared out of sorts during public appearances, lost his train of thought, and struggled to perform basic physical tasks. But when the footage of those damning moments inevitably went viral, Biden’s allies would insist the videos were misleadingly edited and didn’t capture the youthful vigor Biden displays behind the scenes. When the Wall Street Journal published a deeply reported story revealing that Biden wasn’t performing any better behind closed doors than he was in public, progressive pundits and elected Democrats closed rank around him.
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough leapt to Biden’s defense, as he has done consistently throughout Biden’s term.
“I’ve spent time with both of those guys privately. Spent time with Biden and Trump privately. I’ve spent time with every House Speaker over the past 30 years. And Joe Biden, I’m not just — it’s just not close,” Scarborough said.
“If you want to talk about international affairs, if you want to talk about how to get bipartisan legislation, Joe Biden is light-years ahead of all of them,” Scarborough added.
A chorus of elected Democrats lined up to smear the Journal’s reporting as partisan.
“Surprise, surprise—everyone attacking @POTUS is a Republican with an agenda,” Senator Patty Murray (D., Wash.) said on X.
“I made clear to the @WSJ regarding the January meeting on Ukraine that the President was absolutely engaged & ran that meeting in a way that brought everyone together.”
Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki has continued to flack for the president in her current gig as an MSNBC host.
“For those sweating Biden’s age and whether he is up to the job… What do you think about this?” former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, now an MSNBC host, said on her show, mocking concerns about Biden’s age. Psaki proceeded to play footage of former president Donald Trump rambling incoherently.
Now, after Biden’s historically lackluster debate performance, the same pundits who insisted concerns about Biden’s age were overblown, are starting to change their tune.
Scarborough, who said in March that Biden is “better than he’s ever been,” acknowledged during his Friday morning show that Democrats should consider replacing him on the ticket.
“I think we have to ask the same questions of him that we have asked of Donald Trump since 2016,” Scarborough said on his Friday morning show. “And that is, if he were CEO and he turned in a performance like that, would any corporation in America, any Fortune 500 corporation in America keep him on as CEO?”
Psaki, meanwhile, appeared on MSNBC and admitted Biden lost the first debate. She was joined in her pessimism by fellow MSNBC host Joy Reid and the entire CNN post-debate panel, which had a full meltdown as they read off quotes from senior Democratic sources panicking about the party’s future.
While they have not yet begun publicly turning on Biden, the assurances of elected Democrats about Biden’s fitness have similarly been revealed as hollow.
In February, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called Biden’s mental acuity “great.”
“Everything I read is they’re trying to get him to cut back his hours because he’s got too much energy,” Senator Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) told NR last year when asked about Biden’s age-related issues.
“We all age differently,” Representative Jim Clyburn (D., S.C.) told the Financial Times last year. “They said the same thing about . . . Ronald Reagan. How many people said Ronald Reagan was too old? Do you remember in his debate with Walter Mondale, the classic line?” he added, referring to Reagan’s famous 1984 debate line about his age.
Earlier this year, special counsel Robert Hur observed Biden’s apparent mental decline in a lengthy report on his investigation into whether Biden mishandled classified documents. Hur noted Biden’s inability to remember the exact years he was vice president and the year his late son Beau passed away, explaining that he had decided not to charge Biden because a jury would be unlikely to convict him given his inability recall events.
“Anyone who would think that they’re at some advantage because of his age thinks that at their peril, because he’s very sharp,” former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said in the wake of the Hur report.
“As I say, it’s all relative. He’s younger than I am, so what do I have to say about his age?” she added.
On the day Hur’s report came out, Biden held an angry press conference seeking to counter Hur’s findings. Instead, he confused the leaders of Egypt and Mexico as he provided an update on Israel’s war against Hamas.
“Everybody knows the president’s age, but when I’ve talked to him, he is incredibly lucid,” Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D., Calif.) told Politico after the fallout from Hur’s report.
Asked about Hur’s report, Representative Dan Goldman (D., N.Y.) told Jake Tapper that Biden is sharper “than anyone I’ve spoken to.” Senator Chris Murphy told Margaret Brennan of CBS News that Biden’s mental acuity “is not a problem.”
Democratic Minnesota governor Tim Walz, meanwhile, insisted that Americans’ concerns about Biden’s mental state were motivated by “ageism.”
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow suggested Biden’s ability to ride a bike was a sign that his age remains a non-issue following the press conference.
“He rides a bike,” Maddow said during an MSNBC segment where the hosts discussed whether “ageism” is hurting Biden. Biden notoriously fell off his bike in a December 2022 ride near his beach house, footage that remains a meme online.
Thursday night after the debate, Maddow was less confident, acknowledging the president’s “halting delivery” during the debate and saying his performance must have “put a shock into the campaign.”
When Hur testified before congress on the contents of his report, Democratic lawmakers repeatedly suggested he was a partisan prosecutor and would seek a high-ranking position if former president Donald Trump defeats Biden this November. In addition, the White House pushed Hur to edit the draft version of his report to soften its language on Biden’s age.
NBC News anchor Chuck Todd said at the time that the Hur report “feeds a narrative” that Biden is no longer fit to do the job.
“Every moment of course gets amplified by the right-wing noise machine,” Todd said of clips demonstrating Biden’s memory issues. “There’s an easy way to basically make this report pointless. The easiest way to get rid of this storyline is to get him out there.”
But, after Biden “got out there” Thursday night, Todd admitted that he “looks like the caricature that conservative media has been painting.”
Most recently, the White House and members of the press corps created a new term, “cheap-fakes,” to describe videos of Biden malfunctioning that they believe to be deceptively cut. Biden’s spokespeople have publicly criticized conservative outlets for covering the supposedly deceptive videos of Biden appearing to be confused, stumbling over his words, and struggling to find his way around stages.
“Fresh off being fact checked by at least 6 mainstream outlets for lying about @POTUS with cheap fakes, Rupert Murdoch’s sad little super pac, the New York Post, is back to disrespecting it’s readers & itself once again. Their ethical standards could deal with a little unfreezing,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said on X about a recent New York Post story on a video of Obama seemingly helping Biden walk off a stage at a fundraiser.
“By pretending the President taking in an applauding crowd for a few seconds is somehow wrong, all they’re really admitting is – once again – is they can’t take on the leadership that’s fueling the strongest economic growth in the world & bringing violent crime to a 50 year low,” Bates added.
First lady Jill Biden could be seen helping to slowly escort Biden off the debate stage Thursday night.
“There were no clips here, you saw it before your eyes,” Todd said of Biden’s debate performance.