NBC’s Kristen Welker put Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on the spot Sunday about President Joe Biden’s mental decline.
The Meet the Press host played a clip of Schumer from February 2024 in which the New York Democrat said he spoke to the president ‘regularly, sometimes several times a week.’
‘His mental acuity is great. It’s fine. It’s as good as it’s been over the years. All this right-wing propaganda that his mental acuity has declined is wrong,’ Schumer said at the time.
Welker then asked what Schumer had to say to Americans who believe Democrats ‘misled’ them about Biden’s mental abilities ahead of the the president’s disastrous June debate with Trump.
‘Look, we didn’t,’ the New York Democrat insisted. ‘And let’s look at President Biden. He’s had an amazing record.’
Schumer compared Biden’s record to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society and pointed out the 235 judges confirmed during the Democrat’s term.
‘And he’s a patriot. He’s a great guy,’ Schumer went on.
‘And when he stepped down, he did it on his own because he thought it was better not only for the Democratic Party, for America,’ the Senate leader added. ‘We should all salute him. We should all salute him.’
At the same time, Schumer wouldn’t bit when Welker asked if he believed that Biden, now 82, would have been able to serve a full four-year term had he stayed in the race and been successful in November.
‘Well, I’m not going to speculate,’ Schumer said.
‘As I said, I think his record is a stellar one. And he’ll go down in history as a really outstanding president,’ the New Yorker Democrat added.
Biden will also go down in history as having helped President-elect Donald Trump take back the White House.
Welker’s interview came one day before the official January 6th certification of Trump’s win.
The Meet the Press host pointed to a recent New York Times op-ed by veteran Democratic strategist James Carville in which he argued his party’s loss was because they lost the message on the economy.
She asked Schumer if he agreed with that assessment.
He didn’t immediately agree and instead said the party was up against ‘very severe headwinds.’
Schumer also offered that the Democrats performed better in Senate races than expected – winning or holding onto seats in the swing states of Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin.
At the same time, Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris lost to Trump in those four states.
Schumer eventually made the point – similarly to Carville – that it was a messaging issue.
‘But all too often, Kristen, we talked about the mechanics of the legislation and the details of the legislation,’ Schumer said.
‘And we really didn’t show the kind of empathy and concern or show enough of it to average working families who didn’t realize how much we had done and how much we care for them.’
‘So what we’re going to do is spend a lot of time talking to working families, showing them how much we care about them, and not just talk about legislation, but talk about the conditions that have made so many working families worried about their futures,’ Schumer said. ‘And that’s going to be a significant change.’