MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said Wednesday he hadn’t seen it President Biden’s mental decline during rallies at the White House, where several people have questioned the president’s legacy as he prepares to hand the presidency back to President-elect Donald Trump.
“I spent, as I’ve said before, two and a half to three hours with Joe Biden at the White House, all over the White House, talking at length and in depth about foreign policy issues. sharp as anyone I’ve talked to and actually spoke like a man who’s been doing this since he was 29 years old and new world leaders. Was he physically slower? Yes? But he also corrected that. “After two and a half to three hours of walking around the White House with him, going around the entire White House, I didn’t see that,” Scarborough said.
During the conversation, Scarborough pushed back Edward Luce of the Financial Times, who argued in a piece published on Wednesday that Biden’s mental decline was an “open secret” in Washington.
“I don’t know if it’s that easy that everyone in Washington DC thought the man was ill-equipped to be president of the United States. I know they say that on social media, but that certainly wasn’t my opinion. I think Mike Barnicle will tell you the same thing, as will Mika,” Scarborough said.
Joe Scarborough launched an encouraging defense of President Biden on Wednesday, when one of his guests claimed that all of Washington DC was aware of Biden’s decline. (Screenshot/MSNBC/MorningJoe)
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Scarborough and Brezinski were some of Biden’s biggest defenders and closest allies in the media. However, Scabrough doubted the president’s fitness after the June debate against Trump.
Scarborough lashed out in March 2024 at viewers who couldn’t handle the “truth” that Biden was the best he’s ever been.
“I’ve been saying it for years, he’s convincing. But I underestimated it when I said he was convincing, he’s much more than convincing. In fact, I think he’s better than ever, intellectually and analytically, because he has been for a while.” 50 years,” Scarborough said during the March broadcast. “Start your tape right now because I’m about to tell you the truth. And you if you can’t handle the truth. This version of Biden is intellectually and analytically the best Biden ever.”
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Luce pushed back on the MSNBC host’s claim that foreign leaders and those closest to Biden were “surprised” by how sharp the president was in meetings.
‘I’m not actually making things up here. I’ve talked to people who also know Biden, and I can assure you that I’ve had many conversations over the years about his declining energy, his declining memory, his increasingly shortened daily schedule to accommodate his declining memory and energy, so I’m not pulling this out of the air,” Luce said.
Scarborough said he did not accuse Luce of making anything up and wondered why people who had noticed the president’s decline had not sounded the alarm sooner. Scarborough and Luce noted Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who suggested that Biden would not run for re-election in September 2023.
President Joe Biden walks down the steps of Air Force One at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, Wednesday, July 17, 2024. Biden returns to his home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., to self-isolate after testing positive for COVID -19 . (Susan Walsh/AP)
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“Because if I had seen it, I would have said it,” Scarborough said.
Luce also said Biden’s claim that he could have won was “highly questionable.”
“I think that’s an understandable sense of pride in the fact that he defeated Trump in 2020 and that, as I want to emphasize, he was a very good president, that he thought he could beat Trump in November. But I do. I think that is completely wrong. I don’t think there’s any basis to believe that,” Luce said.
