MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said he still believes Joe Biden was at his “best” in 2024.
Appearing on Next Up with Mark Halperin, Scarborough defended his viral comments from March 2024, saying he “never saw” Biden’s bad days.
Halperin responded that the MSNBC host saw the then-president during some of his most notable gaffes. Scarborough then acknowledged that Biden “stumbled and bumbled around” but said Biden’s mistakes were no different from those made by “other politicians” or “Donald Trump.
The original clip aired on Morning Joe in March 2024 and features Scarborough describing then-President Biden as “far beyond cogent.”
“I undersold him when I said he was cogent… in fact, I think he’s better than he’s ever been intellectually, analytically, because he’s been around for 50 years… This version of Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever.”
Halperin said on the podcast that the 2024 clip has become a “symbol for the right of the media and MSNBC having so much ‘Trump derangement syndrome’ that you’re claiming a man who has clearly lost mental acuity is the ‘best Biden ever.’”
The veteran political pundit asked Scarborough: “Looking back at the that do you think it was misleading to say he was the best Biden ever, except on the days when he’s not the best Biden ever?”
Scarborough hit back that it was his “couple of hours” with Biden “sitting, talking, going around the world” that convinced him of the then-president’s mental acuity.
The MSNBC host was reminded that he had seen some of Biden’s most notable gaffes, including when he appeared to ask if a congresswoman who had recently died was at a White House conference.
“I haven’t spoken to anyone who says Biden was incapable of running the government,” Scarborough said.
In a back and forth, Scarborough also said that his and co-host and wife Mika Brzezinski’s much criticized November meeting with Trump after years of animosity has yielded “the same” results—that he better understands the president’s mental state.
Halperin’s podcast is part of former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly’s network, which also includes shows by Daily Mail columnist Maureen Callahan and conservative influencer Link Lauren.
The partnership is an unlikely one, as Kelly was a vocal critic of Halperin after he was accused of sexual misconduct at the height of the #MeToo movement in 2017.
Halperin was accused of sexually harassing 12 women while political director at ABC News in the early 2000s. He apologized for pursuing “relationships with women that I worked with, including some junior to me” and for his behavior, though he denied some of the allegations. He was fired from his roles at NBC and MSNBC but has since made somewhat of a comeback.
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