As Townhall has been covering, there's been plenty of coverage about the fallout of now former President Joe Biden's decline, and who knew what and when. While we knew and had been covering, the Biden White House was all too happy to cover up what was going on, as were their allies in the mainstream media. The revelations that have been coming out, including with Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's book, "Original Sin," have thrown Democrats into disarray over the blame game, including former DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison.
Over at our sister site of RedState, Sister Toldjah highlighted how Harrison not only spoke about it on MSNBC's "The Weekend," but that he himself posted the interview. Harrison took quite the tone in both his remarks, and the post he shared.
The clip and the interview actually begins with Harrison speaking out about David Hogg, a current DNC vice chairman. Although Hogg and Malcom Kenyatta, another vice chairman, were just voted in back in February, there will be new elections in June to redo the vote. It may be over the DNC's own diversity rules, but it can't be ignored how Hogg has been making headlines for calling out his own party, even spending $20 million on a primary initiative, with Harrison calling him out for "airing" those issues.
Biden came up with regards to pushback, and "keeping it within the party," with co-host Jacqueline Alemany asking, "isn't part of the problem with Biden's failed reelection and the process that went down with that, where voters frankly felt that elites had let them down, isn't it time for change and to shake things up?"
Harrison pushed back on her, as he claimed that Democrat leadership didn't try to tell other party members that they couldn't primary Biden, with Alemany bringing up now former Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN), who had stepped down from his House leadership role not long before and who also retired for the 2024 election when he challenged Biden. Alemany reminded that Phillips that he "became a pariah, so it wasn't exactly an open season." Throughout this part of the conversation, Harris still kept to how others could have run and that the DNC was not able to stop them.
Robert F. Kennedy, who went on to endorse now President Donald Trump for his second term and even leads the Department of Health & Human Services in his administration, also tried to run as a Democrat against Biden, though he then did so as an independent, before ultimately dropping out to support Trump.
Like other top Democrats have done, Harrison went for quite the blame game. "And so, I think, I think it's just a lot of sort of looking back with rose colored glasses to say, 'well, we could have done this, you could have done that, you could have done that,' well, nobody of substance, nobody of gravitas gets into the contest, a la a, you know, Jimmy Carter-Ted Kennedy [race], right? That was a whole different situation," Harrison said, speaking of the 1980 Democratic primary, with then President Carter going on to lose reelection to President Ronald Reagan. "But Dean Phillips was not a Ted Kennedy," Harrison continued, still going after the now former congressman. "Right? And so you couldn't have that type of contest, and we did not have that type of contest!"
There's another Democrat from South Carolina who has gone for that tactic. Rep. James Clyburn, who had quite the role in Biden becoming the Democratic nominee in 2020, as well as now former Vice President Kamala Harris, then a U.S. senator for California, becoming his running mate.
The Democrats in disarray over the 2024 election, as Sister Toldjah discussed, came up even further when co-host Eugene Daniels brought up "Original Sin." As he pointed out, there's a section in the book claiming that Biden "didn't recognize" Harrison, who was the DNC chairman at the time. "I've heard you say this didn't happen, so, did it happen or not?" Daniels asked.
There was now dancing around the issue there. "It was a bold-faced lie," Harrison insisted, his voice raising. "I don't know where the hell they got that from, and I've told that to Alex [Thompson]," he continued, emphasizing how "it's a bold-faced lie" and also adding that "it's pretty, excuse my language, pissing me off that he continued to push it and say it!"
Harrison continued to repeatedly deny such a claim, even joking, to laughter from others, that it didn't happen unless it meant he himself was the one who needed to take a cognitive test. With such framing, though, it is also worth wondering if Harrison was admitting there, even as he denied that Biden couldn't recognize him, that there was something at best cognitively questionable.
"And so, for me, it provides me with all I need to know about what this book is about," Harris added. He also pointed out that he's seen similar claims supposedly being denied, including when former Biden had to be guided off of the stage at George Clooney's fundraiser last June, and by former President Barack Obama, whom Biden served under as vice president from 2009-2017. Clooney went on to call for Biden to drop out of the race just weeks after that fundraiser.
Harrison tried to explain it away as Biden trying to listen to "three young white men that we're yelling about Palestine," which led to Obama pulling him away. "But again, you know," he insisted, "you can make and spin things to the theory of your particular case, but that book lost all credibility when they put my name in it for something that did not happen and then continued to double down on that particular story!"
Not only did Harrison engage in the blame game, but also selective history, as if this were the only concerning moment to do with Biden, and while he was still president and even still running for reelection. Alemany still pushed back even further on this instance, reminding how it was not only a long passage in the book, but referenced in The New Yorker as well.
Harrison also tried to argue that "it's part of the protocol" for those in the presence are introduced to the president, no matter how well he knows him, and that it is thus "a bunch of hooey," to make these claims. "Hell, just don't lie about me," Harrison then added. "Write whatever you want, but don't put my name in stuff that I know is not right." Harrison, Daniels, and fellow co-host Jonathan Capehart went on to emphasize, for good measure, the directive to "keep my name out of your mouth" as far as Harrison is concerned.
Daniels went on to spin some positives for the Democratic Party, even speaking about how "it feels like there's plenty of openings for them to win back the House, maybe win some seats back in the Senate and turn this thing around" for the midterms, despite how the Democratic Party has been and continues to fare poorly for Trump's second term, no matter what Trump's numbers may be. Sure enough, this gave Harrison another opportunity to promote the flailing Democratic Party and DNC.
Grateful to have cleared the air on a few things on @TheWeekendMSNBC.
— Jaime Harrison (@harrisonjaime) May 25, 2025
And yes, some of y’all really need to stop the lies and keep my name out your mouth. pic.twitter.com/7fqptc5mcX
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