New York Senator and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer insisted Sunday that he and other top Democrats didn’t mislead the public on President Biden’s mental acuity.
Speaking to host Kristen Welker on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Schumer was asked to respond to “Americans who feel as though you and other top Democrats misled them” regarding Biden’s condition.
Schumer quickly pivoted to the President’s track record to defend him.
“Look, we didn’t,” Schumer said of the misleading allegation. “And let’s look at President Biden. He’s had an amazing record. The legislation we passed, one of the most significant groups of legislation since the New Deal, since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, putting in 235 judges – a record. And he’s a – he’s a patriot. He’s a great guy. And when he stepped down, he did it on his own because he thought it was better, not only for the Democratic Party, but for America. We should all salute him. We should all salute him.
Welker further pressed him, asking whether – as Biden contends – he could have won had he stayed in the race and served another four years.
“Well, I’m not going to speculate,” Schumer countered. “As I said, I think his record is a stellar one, and he’ll go down in history as a really outstanding president.”
Earlier in the conversation, Schumer was asked to explain what happened in the recent presidential election.
“Alright, let’s talk now about the future of the Democratic Party,” Welker began. “Democrats have said this is a real reckoning after losing the White House, the Senate, not winning back the House. Here’s what Democratic strategist James Carville had to say. He wrote, quote, ‘We lost for one very simple reason. It was, it is, and it will always be, the economy, stupid.’ Do you agree? What do you think was the root cause of Democrats’ across-the-board loss?”
Schumer blamed bad communications issues on messaging, admitting, “we did some things wrong, and we have to look in the mirror and see what we did wrong.”
Schumer said that the “working families of America” would be the party’s focus going forward. “We believe in them, and we passed all kinds of legislation that helped – the infrastructure bill, which made our economy stronger and employed lots of people; the CHIP hubs, where we’re now having CHIP hubs in places to do new manufacturing and new research that were left out before – Missoula, Montana; Bloomington, Indiana; the bill lowering the cost of prescription drugs.”
Those accomplishments were not connecting, though.
“So we did a lot of good things, but all too often, Kristen, we talked about the mechanics of the legislation and the details of the legislation, and we really didn’t show the kind of empathy and concern to average – 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.” He vowed to “spend a lot of time talking to working families, showing them how much we care about them.” That “will make a difference,” he added.
