It is the season of media mea culpas, with MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough on Wednesday admitting he was “obviously wrong” when he described former President Joe Biden as the “best Biden ever” last year, just months before he dropped out of the 2024 race.
Scarborough made the comment on “Morning Joe” while interviewing CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson, who were on to promote their new book, “Original Sin.” The book covers the cognitive decline of President Biden while he was in office, and the reporters and administration officials who contributed to the “cover up” of his health.
“I said that this was Biden at his best. That’s what I saw. That’s what other people saw. I was obviously wrong,” Scarborough told Tapper and Thompson.
He continued: “So, I’m not sure what my takeaway is here [for] the next time. But if you’re around a guy for hours and hours and hours, I guess the question is, what’s the takeaway here? What did you learn? Because did you pick it up in real time?””
Tapper responded that he “saw what everybody else saw,” including “the stumbles in front of the camera.” But he said there were other times, like at a luncheon for media members before the 2023 State of the Union, where Biden seemed more functional.
Ultimately, there were “two Joe Bidens,” Tapper said, and the “non-functioning” version was seen more and more as his presidency went on — culminating in his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump in June 2024. Less than a month later, Biden ended his campaign.
Scarborough’s admission that he was “wrong” about Biden comes just a day after he was hesitant to go that far. While appearing on “Next Up With Mark Halperin” on Tuesday, he said the ex-president “stumbled and bumbled around,” but that it is “actually the same case as a lot of times when I’ve gone in and talked to Donald Trump.”
The MSNBC host is not the only mainstream reporter who is saying he did not cover Biden’s cognitive decline well enough during his time in office. Tapper last week said that there was “not enough” coverage of Biden’s health issues, including from himself.
And on Tuesday, while appearing on Megyn Kelly’s show, Tapper said he called Lara Trump to apologize to her, after he ripped her in 2020 for claiming Biden was showing signs of cognitive decline. “She saw something that I did not see at the time,” Tapper said. “100 percent. And I own that.”
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