MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ host Joe Scarborough is fighting to maintain his credibility after defending President Joe Biden against cognitive decline accusations.
Following the stunning loss of Vice President Kamala Harris in November, Democrats have been looking to place blame for their abysmal showing across the board. Many of those who defended Biden from Republican attacks regarding his mental acuity and ability to perform the job of president are now having to defend themselves. Scarborough claims that he “did not see” any signs of decline that he believes should have stopped Biden from running in 2024. During a heated back-and-forth with Financial Times US national editor Ed Luce, the host challenged the claim that the president’s decline was an open secret in Washington D.C.
Luce has recently published an op-ed in which he described Biden as a “flawed hero” whose “virtue and hubris” ultimately resulted in his own legacy being tarnished. Luce went on to cast blame on the Democratic Party for effectively “shielding” the president from “unscripted encounters with the public and the media” while also bashing the media for casting out journalists who had legitimate questions about the elderly leader’s ability to function at full capacity.
Scarborough butted in to clear his own name on the topic.
“Let me press you on a few things here. You said that David Ignatius said something that everybody in Washington knew. I must say, there are many of us who know Joe Biden fairly well. I’m sitting next to one of them [co-host Mika Brzezinski]. I’m sure Mike Barnicle will have a question for you as well. Mike Barnicle, his chief complaints early on, quietly, to me and others, was that they were not letting Joe Biden out enough,” the co-host pointed out. “Mike talks to President Biden in the house regularly throughout the year. I spent, as I’ve said before, two and a half to three hours with Joe Biden in the White House, all over the White House, talking at length and in-depth about foreign policy matters. And he was as sharp as anybody else I’ve spoken to and spoke, actually, like a man who’s been doing this since he was 29 years old and knew world leaders.
“Was he slower physically? Yes. Did he occasionally jumble a few words or a few names? Yes. But he corrected those as well. So after two and a half to three hours of it with him in the White House, going all over the White House, I did not see that,” Scarborough added.
He attempted to justify his claims by saying world leaders agreed that Biden was not as mentally bad off as “social media” would have you believe.
“I don’t know that it’s quite so easy that everybody in Washington, D.C, that the man was ill-equipped to be president of the United States. I know that’s what they say on social media, but that certainly wasn’t my experience. I would guess Mike Barnicle will tell you the same thing as well as Mika but I mean, foreign leaders and foreign governments told me very different things to what you’ve just said,” he said.
Luce pointed out that the debate between Biden and President-elect Trump proved “the American public had it right.”
“Wait, wait, I’ve got to interrupt you again and again, you and I are very good friends. I’ve got to stop you right there,” the co-host butted in. “I’ve had in-depth conversations with people in the White House before, during and after who are still trying to figure out what happened that night. You know, I think I said on the air, Jeff Zients said that he still will go out and his friends will be saying, why didn’t you tell? You think we knew that was going to happen? There’s still people that are trying to figure it out. And I said this to Susan Page a couple of weeks ago, what exactly happened that night? Because anybody that’s telling you that that is a reflection of how Joe Biden was operating inside of the White House regularly, that’s something radically different than people that worked closest with him and people that I know that were around him for large parts of the day were saying, yeah.”
“Joe, I’m not actually making stuff up here,” Luce snipped. “I talk to people who know Biden as well, and I can assure you, I had many conversations over the previous couple of years about his declining energy, his declining memory, his increasingly short daily schedule to accommodate his declining memory and energy. So, you know, I’m not I’m not pulling this out of thin air.”
The segment continued after a short break:
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Sierra Marlee is a millennial whose hunger for the truth in a world of fake news has led her to write. Marlee also contributes to BizPac Review.
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