CNN host John Berman on Monday rejected claims by Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida that only “elites” are worried about President Joe Biden's debate performance.
Biden's husky voice and stuttering during Thursday's debate with former President Donald Trump sparked concerns about his age and fitness to be president. Wasserman Schultz appeared to try to dismiss those concerns on CNN News Central as coming only from “elites” and not ordinary Americans, but Berman told him he didn't think that assessment was accurate. (Related article: Biden lies about no soldiers being killed under his command)
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'Don't believe that's true': CNN host refutes former DNC chairman's claim that only 'elites' are worried about Biden debate pic.twitter.com/zwcpChvVKy
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) July 1, 2024
“Let's be honest, John, this is a conversation that's happening among the elites,” Wasserman Schultz said.
“Congressman, I don't believe that's true. I think wherever you are and whoever you talk to this weekend, the subject of discussion has been the debate and President Biden's performance. I don't think that discussion is just for congressmen,” Berman responded.
Wasserman Schultz later clarified that by “elite” she wasn't just referring to members of Congress.
“There's certainly a spectrum of how I define elites. I mean, my local voters, voters across this country, they're not paying attention to what The New York Times or The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is saying,” she said. “They're not paying attention to what the political elites are worried about. They're paying attention to making sure we can have a president like Joe Biden who's going to keep inflation down, who's going to keep fighting to bring American jobs back home, like he did with the semiconductor science bill. When I'm with my local voters, they're concerned about their bottom line, they're concerned about not having a president like Donald Trump, who tried to overturn the results of a legitimate election, who populated his administration with unethical people, who was focused on enriching himself with Donald Trump. And that's a choice.”
“They want to elect a president who will stand by them, not one who will deceive the American people, as Donald Trump has done time and time again,” the former Democratic National Chairman added. “And at the end of the day, we have to stop. We don't have time for all this fretting. We're less than five months away from the election. We're less than two months away from the convention. We need to focus on organizing now, not worrying about what happened in a 90-minute debate.”
Any attempt to replace Biden with another Democratic candidate would likely face practical, political and even legal obstacles. Democrats have raised the possibility of replacing the president as the party's nominee, but Biden has not indicated he would step down.
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