During a discussion of Thursday’s presidential debate between 2024 Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Joe Biden on PBS’s “Washington Week with the Atlantic” on Friday, The Atlantic’s moderator and editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg said he was hesitant to air the video of Biden saying during the debate that “we could defeat Medicare” because “it’s somewhat painful to watch.” And it’s true, he said, and “painful to watch regardless of party affiliation.” Goldberg went on to say that the Medicare fiasco was “the moment about 12 minutes into the debate when everybody was like, ‘Oh, this isn’t going to work.'”
After Politico Playbook co-author and White House correspondent Eugene Daniels mentioned the Medicare moment during the debate, Goldberg said, “I’m hesitant to show this moment because it’s a little painful. It’s painful to watch regardless of party affiliation. But I think we should remind viewers that there was that moment, about 12 minutes into the debate, when everyone was like, Oh, this is going to go wrong. [Medicare] “That moment. And we should watch.”
Goldberg then played a video of that moment from the debate.
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