Former President Joe Biden's fellow Democrats covered up for him until it was no longer politically convenient for them to do so. He was eventually forced out of the race, though then Vice President Kamala Harris still lost to now President Donald Trump, thanks to both the Electoral College and the popular vote. Republicans also kept control of the House and took back control of the Senate. As if the situation weren't damning enough for Democrats, the news cycle has been particularly brutal for Biden, including and especially with the release of some of the Robert Hur tapes from when Biden was actually president.
Although Biden's cancer diagnosis had not yet been announced for the Sunday morning shows at the start of this week, the Hur tapes had been. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), although he did throw Biden and Harris under the bus, doesn't deserve too much credit, as he also defended Biden's supposed accomplishments as president. In addition to his appearance on NBC News' "Meet the Press," Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) went on ABC News' "This Week."
Khanna is noteworthy in that he comes off as someone who at least seeks to understand Republicans more than his fellow Democrats. He too was asked about how long Biden stayed in the race. Worse for Khanna is that the network played some rather damning clips of how he defended Biden and how supposedly with it he was:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
REP. RO KHANNA (D-CA): I have spoken with the president. He is fully coherent. He is on top of details when I have talked just a couple weeks ago.
I just saw the president two weeks ago on a rope line. He was very sharp. He was humorous, engaging with members, remembering members by name.
You can't say he's the same person as he was. You've got to say, look, he has wisdom, he has experience, he has the right values.
It's his decision about what he wants to do, and I trust him. I trust his patriotism to make the right decision.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
Moderator Jonathan Karl eventually asked him about those clips, specifically, "Do you think you got it wrong last year?" These were comments that Khanna later mentioned he hadn't remembered making so many of.
To Khanna's credit, he didn't try to dance around the issue. "Yes. Look, the Democratic Party needs to be honest. There's a sense that people want honesty. They want to restore a sense of public service. In light of what has come out, it's painfully obvious President Biden should not have run. People who say, well, let's talk about the future. We've got to build the credibility about that to be able to talk about the future and improving Americans' lives," he responded.
He even spoke to the lessons he himself learned. "Let me tell you the lesson I learned. We played too much deference to party leaders, to the old guard, to the advisers. We needed to be more independent and push back. I'm known to be independent," he added. "I co-chaired Bernie Sanders's campaign, and I'm going to be more independent going forward, calling for primary challenges when they're appropriate, making sure we don't have Super PACs in Democratic primaries. But that was the lesson that I learned."
It wasn't long before Karl also brought up the release of Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's book released today, days after the Khanna-Karl interview.
"They write Biden and those closest to him refuse to admit the reality that his energy, cognitive skills, and communications capacity had faltered considerably, even worse, through various means, they tried to hide it," Karl said about the book. As he asked, "Is that the way you see it? What--did we have a cover-up? Was there a cover-up in the Biden White House, a cover-up of his true mental and physical condition?"
Unfortunately, Khanna's answers did turn disappointing. "I don't think it was a cover-up. I don't know. I didn't do the reporting," he began with, though he did speak about how "I do think that the advisers and people close... to Joe Biden owe an explanation. I mean, they were on Zoom calls. They were telling all of us that he is capable, that he is going to be able to make the race. Obviously, that turned out not to be correct," he added, stating what is indeed the obvious. Murphy, during his appearance, kept speaking about issues with Biden as being "in retrospect."
"Now, I do, again, believe that some of us should have pushed back more. I think that that is the lesson that I learned. But they need to show what happened. One possibility is that they kept accommodating, accommodating, accommodating, and didn't realize how much they had accommodated. But that's a question they owe an explanation for," he added. "What I don't think the Democratic Party can do is just say, let's talk about the future. Let's move past this. People in America are fair. You showed all those clips. I didn't realize I made that many appearances on television."
Where Khanna ended up having too much in common with Murphy, however, was his defense of Biden. "Well, I still think, look, he overcame the loss of his son," he said, which could have been in reference to a particularly concerning moment of the Hur tapes, which was played for Murphy on NBC News. "He has had a remarkable life. He showed a lot of resilience. I--that was a question of his character. I still think Joe Biden has a lot to be proud of in his record," Khanna said about Biden, going on to mention, in a positive manner, legislation like the woefully misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden himself later admitted was more so about climate alarmism and should have reflected that in the bill's name, which he also reminded came with a price tag of $369 billion.
Joe Biden just STRAIGHT UP ADMITTED that the Inflation Reduction Act was a TOTAL SCAM that had NOTHING to do with reducing inflation! Does Kamala Harris agree with this? "We should've named it what it was!"
— Townhall.com (@Townhallcom) Sep 4, 2024
"The fact that we got out of COVID and the economy, and had a strong economic recovery, and he has a lot of resilience in his life, that doesn't mean, though, that he made the right decision to seek a second term," is something Khanna also spoke to.
Biden indeed should not have run for a second term, and the polls showed Biden losing to Trump for a rematch of 2020. Although Trump was underestimated again for 2024, the Harris-Trump race was much closer in the polls. Khanna may been right about how Biden should not have run again, but the economy was also wrecked during the Biden-Harris administration, and inflation was a serious problem, especially thanks to the American Rescue Plan Act, which even Democratic economists, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers included, warned about, which the Biden-Harris administration gaslit him relentlessly on.
