Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who in February decried the idea that President Joe Biden was cognitively impaired as “right-wing propaganda,” is denying that he and other top Democrats ever misled the public about the president’s mental acuity.
During an appearance Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” anchor Kristen Welker played a clip from Feb. 13 in which Schumer assured reporters that he talks to Biden regularly and that “this right-wing propaganda that his mental acuity has declined is wrong.”
That assurance came mere months before Biden’s catastrophic debate against his then-GOP opponent, President-elect Donald Trump, and before he confused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with Russia’s Vladimir Putin at a NATO summit event.
Biden ultimately exited the race in July, only for his replacement nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, to lose the election. When asked Sunday what he’d tell voters who feel Schumer misled them about Biden’s mental acuity, he argued boldly: “Look, we didn’t.”
“And let’s look at President Biden,” Schumer told Welker. “He’s had an amazing record, the legislation we passed, one of the most significant groups of legislation since [former President] Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, putting in 235 judges — a record.”
“And he’s a patriot,” he continued. “He’s a great guy. And when he stepped down he did it on his own, because he thought it was better, not only for the Democratic Party, [but also] for America. We should all salute him. We should all salute him.”
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Dissatisfied with the answer, which arguably rejected the premise of the question outright and merely chronicled Biden’s legislative record, Welker followed up by asking if Schumer still believes Biden could’ve served another term had he stayed in the race and won.
“Well, I’m not going to speculate,” he told Welker, who had notably only asked about his own past claim that Biden’s decline was insidiously partisan propaganda. “As I said, I think his record is a stellar one, and he’ll go down in history as a really outstanding president.”
Schumer was reelected last month for his fifth term as senate majority leader and endorsed Ben Wikler on Thursday to lead the Democratic National Committee. Whether the party will learn from their second loss against Trump is unclear, but for some, is already unlikely.