Democrats are reportedly taking Joe Biden to task for appearances in the media this week, which they say only reminds everyone why the party is in trouble and why voters elected Donald Trump.
In his second post-presidency interview, a squinting and sometimes stuttering Biden appeared on ABC’s “The View” Thursday. He was later joined on the show by former first lady Jill Biden, who at times interjected to finish her husband’s answers.
As Brietbart News reported, the show was set to provide the Bidens with a warm welcome from its liberal hosts and its traditionally like-minded audience.
Instead, it could be argued, the appearance only reminded voters of the last days of the Biden administration. Strategist Anthony Coley, who worked for the Biden administration, put it this way to the Hill:
Elections are about the future. Every time Joe Biden emerges, we fight an old war. Every interview he does provides a contrast to Trump that’s just not helpful for the Democratic brand, which needs trusted messengers and fighters who can reach independents and moderates and inspire the base. Joe Biden ain’t that.
Oddly, or perhaps expediently, detractors interviewed by the Hill still sidestepped the obvious — that the once fiery and animated former senator and vice president is clearly at age 82 a shell of his former self.
What could be called the former President’s lack of self-awareness was inadvertently highlighted by Biden himself when he slammed President Donald Trump’s second administration, saying he has had “the worst 100 days any president’s ever had” to audience applause.
Trump, while well beyond middle age at 78, nevertheless has signed scores of executive orders, slammed the border shut, lured trillions in new investment into the United States and provided almost daily media access, unlike Biden’s almost locked-down administration.
One might criticize Trump’s policies or governing style, but hardly the amount of action, which is the traditional measure of a new administration.
Earlier in the week, Biden did a sit-down interview with the BBC, where he also took aim at President Trump, accusing him of wanting to seize Canada and Greenland. “What president talks like that?” he said.
The recent interviews follow a number of books detailing the last year of the Biden administration, including reports that his mental acuity was failing while in office. Conservatives like Fox’s Sean Hannity were pounding away at the former vice president’s cognitive abilities as far back as the 2020 race.
However, the former president claimed on the View that reports of his mental decline are false and were sourced from people who never directly worked with him. Jill Biden also defended her husband, claiming he often worked late at night after a full day.
Biden, without going into any details, did blame himself for Democratic losses in 2024, telling the show’s hosts, “I was in charge, and he won.”
All the more reason Biden should do community outreach like former president Jimmy Carter and not do sit-down interviews, one former supporter said.
Others blame Biden for not sticking to a one-term presidency instead of running for a second term.
“I don’t think there’s a willingness to cop to the fact that he should never have run again in the first place,” one unnamed strategist told the Hill. “Why can’t he come out and acknowledge that part of this is on him?”
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