Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer brushed off concerns about Joe Biden’s fitness to serve as president and his initial decision to run for a second term in an animated exchange Monday.
The back and forth with the top Senate Democrat unfolded Monday on CNN’s “The Arena” when host Kasie Hunt questioned Schumer about Biden’s health amid fresh questions raised in a new book out next week.
“Did you really not have any idea that he was not fit to serve a second term?” Hunt asked Schumer directly.
“We’re looking forward,” the New York lawmaker said, as he attempted to shift focus to “the largest Medicaid cut in front of us.” When pressed, Schumer simply repeated that he and the Democratic Party were “looking forward.”
“That's it?” Hunt responded.
“That's it,” Schumer said.
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Former NBC anchor Chuck Todd wasn’t impressed. He immediately slammed Schumer as “among the people that are responsible for this."
“I have to say, I find everybody now talking to these authors, get out of here, go home. You're part of the problem,” Todd said. The Democratic Party is in “worse shape” now “because of this distrust,” he added.
“The public feels as if the party leadership let them down and let them let this happen,” Todd said. “He’s as responsible as anybody else. He was a leader in the party. He could have said something sooner, and he didn't.”
Former Bill Clinton White House strategist Paul Begala joked that, like Schumer, he was also “looking forward.”
“Looking forward to reading Jake's book,” he said. “Because I want to know what the hell happened, and I want accountability.
"Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again," a book by Alex Thompson of Axios and Jake Tapper of CNN, will be published next week.
