Rep. Jim Clyburn, who is widely credited with rescuing former President Joe Biden’s then-flailing presidential bid in 2020, acknowledged that concerns Democrats tried to cover up the 46th president’s condition could be harming their standing with the public.
CNN host Jake Tapper asked Clyburn, 84, whether the Democrats’ “incredibly low standing” with the public is related to the impression among many that they “hid his actual dysfunction, his non-functioning abilities from the American people.”
“It very well could have. I haven’t looked at the numbers behind the numbers to come to any conclusion as to what exactly is going on here,” Clyburn said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday.
The South Carolina Democrat noted that he’s heard mixed reactions from everyday South Carolinians about Biden’s cognitive state.
“I have talked to people, talked to students,” he explained. “And people still feel that Joe Biden had the capacity to do the work that needed to be done. They still feel that Joe Biden was a good president. And I do as well.”
“But these people are also concerned when they look back at those tapes, they remember the debate,” he continued. “And they are concerned as to whether or not that was, in fact, just an incident or whether that was a condition that was being kept from people. I have no way of knowing which one is true.”
On Friday, leaked audio of Biden’s October 2023 interview with special counsel Robert Hur was reported by Axios, showing the 46th president stammering over his words and forgetting key details about his life, such as the death of his late son Beau and the year his vice presidency ended.
Tapper has co-authored a book, “Original Sin,” with Axios’ star reporter Alex Thompson about Biden’s mental decline in the White House and efforts by his allies to conceal it.
Clyburn reflected that he had not seen the level of deterioration that was on display in the leaked Hur tapes during his personal interactions with Biden, 82.
“No, I didn’t,” Clyburn said. “I saw Biden often, but not as often as people seem to think. I saw him. I talked to him on the telephone very often, and I never saw anything that I thought was outside of the ordinary.”
The South Carolina Democrat pointed to his own father’s aging and said that it was normal for octogenarians to talk and walk more slowly. He also insisted that he believed at the time that Biden could handle another four years as president.
“Yes, I thought that back then,” he replied when asked about whether Biden could’ve finished out a second term, which he would’ve ended at age 86. “I still think that, but I don’t know that.”
Still, he admitted that Biden’s disastrous debate performance against President Trump in June of last year had him second-guessing that belief.
“I watched that debate, and you and I talked about it. And, yes, I was concerned,” he said. “Now, the question is, is this a condition or is this an incident?”
“A lot of us were a bit concerned about his schedule in the run-up to the debate. He took two overseas trips, came back, and started preparing for that debate.”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), 51, also said that by 2024, the public wanted a new standard bearer and that “it was absolutely a mistake for the party to not listen.”
“I think we all bear responsibility,” Murphy told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “We maybe didn’t listen as early as we should have in part because we have immense loyalty to this man who had led this country out of a pandemic, who had been maybe the most prodigious legislator as a president.”
“Ultimately, in retrospect, you can’t defend what the Democratic Party did because we are stuck … with a corrupt president in the Oval Office. And we should have given ourselves a better chance to win.”
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