President Biden and his allies have offered several reasons for Biden’s poor performance in the presidential debates, but one reporter argued Wednesday that their explanations don’t make sense.
Biden’s performance in last week’s presidential debate left Democrats worried about his chances of beating former President Trump in November’s election. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted in the days that the president’s poor debate performance was due to a “cold,” repeating an explanation he gave Tuesday night that he had not yet recovered from “jet lag” after traveling to Europe for the G7 summit.
“It wasn’t his best night. He had a cold, he was jet lagged,” she said. “I heard this directly from the president. And when he falls, he gets back up.”
But when asked by CNN about the “shift in messaging from the White House,” Axios national political reporter Alex Thompson argued that excuse doesn’t hold up.
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“I mean, we don’t really have time in this segment to look at the shifting of explanations in detail, because not a word was said about him having a cold until an hour into the debate,” he said. “And then earlier this week, Joe Biden never mentioned having a cold. And then Karine Jean-Pierre said that when he said he had a cold, he didn’t actually have any cold medicine.”
Thompson continued, “And he said, ‘Oh, it’s really a travel issue,’ but we also have to remember that he was already in the Eastern Time Zone about 10 days before the debate. Certainly he did a lot of traveling in early June, but they arranged this to allow for lots of downtime.”
WASHINGTON, DC, May 14, 2024: U.S. President Joe Biden looks up at the rain while speaking at an event to promote U.S. investment and jobs in the Rose Garden of the White House, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (Photo by Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
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“The White House still can’t figure out why Joe Biden couldn’t string together a simple sentence during the debate,” he added.
Thompson said even if the president was ill, it didn’t explain his “inability to answer simple questions.”
“I think the White House is looking for an explanation, but I honestly don’t know if there is a good explanation,” he said.
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Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
