Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Sunday that they didn't mislead Americans about President Biden's decline or ability to serve despite the president dropping out of the race after being faced with a February 2024 clip of him declaring the debate over Biden's health was "right-wing propaganda."
NBC News' Kristen Welker confronted the senator with a clip of Schumer talking about Biden on February 13, 2024. Schumer said, "His mental acuity is great. It’s fine. It’s as good as it’s been over the years. All this right-wing propaganda that his mental acuity has declined is wrong."
After playing the clip, Welker asked Schumer what he would tell Americans who think they were misled by top Democrats. Schumer reportedly told the president he needed to drop out of the race after the debate.
"We didn't. Let's look at President Biden. He’s had an amazing record. The legislation we passed, one of the most significant groups of legislation since Lyndon Johnson’s great society, putting in 235 judges, a record, and he’s a patriot. He’s a great guy, and when he stepped down he did it on his own because he thought it was better, not only for the Democratic Party, for America. We should all salute him. We should all salute him," Schumer said.
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Welker then asked Schumer if he was confident Biden could have served a second term.
"Well I'm not going to speculate. As I said, I think his record is a stellar one, and he’ll go down in history as a really outstanding president," Schumer responded.
The "Meet the Press" panel also discussed the Schumer interview and MSNBC host Symone Sanders Townsend argued Schumer should have pushed back much harder on Welker.
"The question on the table is, is the president all the way there? And the answer is unequivocally yes," Sanders insisted. "People can say that you feel as though President Biden might be a little too old to do the job, but he's doing the job, his mental acuity is there. So I think there is a conflation of two things there. It’s his mental capacity and serving another four years as old as he is, but those are two separate things, in my opinion, and these people that have known Joe Biden for their entire lives and I know President Biden, and it's like, can you all defend me a little more?"
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Politico's Jonathan Martin argued that it wasn't worth defending Biden, because the president chose himself over the good of the party.
"He’s not exiting in a way that I think reflects well on his party and Democrats are deeply, deeply unhappy about it, and they should be, frankly," Martin said.
Marc Short, who previously worked for Vice President Mike Pence, said it hurt Democrats to try to tell Americans what they saw with their own eyes during Biden's debate against Trump.
"But it's not true that the president doesn’t have mental acuity," Sanders shot back before Short said, "of course it is."
"He can at least put a sentence together," Sanders argued, suggesting that President-elect Donald Trump could not put a sentence together.
Short asked, "are you sure?" Sanders confidently said yes and noted she spoke to Biden recently.
