The co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” kicked off the show Monday with a 15-minute monologue defending President Joe Biden’s White House bid, but acknowledged that his performance at last week’s debate was a “total disaster.”
“Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski acknowledged Biden’s poor debate performance, saying on CNN that his voice was raspy, he struggled to organize his thoughts and articulate his answers and he appeared frozen at times.
“That was bad…[Biden] I had no idea. It was a total disaster, by any standards.”
Still, she pushed back against “global calls” for Biden to withdraw from the party and field a new candidate.
The left-leaning political commentator and Biden family friend, who said she has known the president and his family well for decades, positioned the incumbent president as a lifelong underdog who will rise from the ashes again in November.
Speaking at a rally in North Carolina the day after the debate, she praised Biden for the “vintage sparkle” in his eye and his “winning smile.”
“I still believe in Joe Biden,” Brzezinski said, “and I’ve learned that counting him out was always going to be a mistake, and doing so now could have devastating consequences for our country.”
She questioned Biden’s schedule before the debate – a visit to Normandy following the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings, a trip to Italy for the G7 climate change summit, and then a trip to Los Angeles before returning to the East Coast – and called for better “management” of his aides.
“It pisses me off that he was moving around the world in four different time zones,” Bleszinski said. “I think it’s a lack of discipline.”
She acknowledged the “sardonic, mocking and heckling” headlines that have appeared across the country, and pointed to several media outlets that have published editorials calling on the president to withdraw from the race.
The New York Times They published an editorial on Friday calling on Biden to withdraw from the race in order to do what’s best for the country.
The paper’s editorial board said Biden had been a “praiseworthy president,” but added that “American voters cannot be expected to ignore what is rather obvious: Biden is not the same man from four years ago.”
The New York Times editorial board said it would continue to support Biden if he continues to campaign, citing the “danger” posed by former President Donald Trump.
But the Times continues, “There is no reason for the party to endanger the nation’s stability and security by forcing voters to choose between Trump’s and Biden’s shortcomings. The gamble is too high to simply expect Americans to ignore or downplay Biden’s advanced age and frailty as they see it with their own eyes.”
Atlanta Journal-Constitution The paper echoed that sentiment, publishing an editorial on Saturday urging Biden to withdraw from the presidential race “in the interest of the nation he has served so honorably for half a century.”
But Bleszinski said Biden has been “given up” many times in his life, from two failed presidential campaigns to difficulties in his personal life, and then bounce back.
She recounted Biden’s tragic history: the deaths of his first wife and infant daughter in a car accident in 1972 shortly after he was elected to the Delaware House of Representatives, Biden’s own two brain aneurysms in the late 1980s, and the death of his son Beau Biden from brain cancer in 2015.
The MSNBC host also defended Biden’s age and the actions he has taken while in the White House.
“With age comes wisdom and experience, and in Joe Biden’s case, that will translate to more bipartisan legislation than any president in generations and the greatest expansion of the NATO alliance in its history,” she said.
The co-host argued that under the Biden administration, the United States is “economically and militarily stronger than at any time in the last half century.”
She said the sitting president “negotiated the toughest, most conservative border control bill in decades, only to have it undone by President Donald Trump.”
Brzezinski blasted Trump’s challenge to the presidential election, saying the choice between Biden and Trump was “between a decade of destruction of our core beliefs, our democratic values and, of course, our Constitution, or one terrible night.”
She described Biden and Trump as “men slowed by the cold and men with cold, vile and merciless hearts.”
And she questioned the paucity of editorials calling on Trump to drop out of the race. Philadelphia Enquirer “The only person who should withdraw from the election is Trump,” he wrote.
