“It was not a good performance,” Symone Sanders-Townsend, a former senior White House adviser to Biden and now an MSNBC host and commentator, said Tuesday morning, adding that “the rumors will never end” about Biden’s age.
“Nobody who was watching thought it was a good performance,” said Jen Psaki, a former Biden press secretary and host on the network.
The new wave of activity began immediately after Thursday’s debate, when prominent figures on MSNBC took tougher stances.
Biden’s “job was to calm the party,” MSNBC host Joy Reid said, “to make them feel like, ‘Yes, I can do this. I can do this for four more years. I have the ability and the stamina and the strength to do it for four more years.’ He didn’t do that. He did the opposite.”
Moderator Alex Wagner called Biden’s answers “disjointed and incoherent,” adding that the president “made no effort to dispel the public’s perception that he is an old man who often gets lost in debates.”
The network’s biggest star, Rachel Maddow, seemed irritated after California Governor Gavin Newsom (Democrat) said in an interview that Democrats should “take action rather than worry.”
“What do you think people who support President Biden, Democratic politicians, people who are planning to vote for him, people who are concerned that he looked older than expected tonight, people who, as Joy said earlier, didn’t seem to reassure people about his stamina issue, should do?”
Media observers took note of MSNBC’s tone, given the network’s long-standing role in easing the anxieties of left-leaning viewers.
“What they’re saying is remarkable,” said a veteran cable news anchor who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid.
“We knew what Fox was going to say, we knew pretty well what CNN was going to say, but the question was what MSNBC was going to say, because that’s where a lot of the Democratic messaging and sympathy comes from,” said Democratic strategist Michael Starr Hopkins. “It was really significant that an MSNBC host said, ‘Wow, this guy can’t do it.'”
Perhaps the biggest change came at the network’s morning show, “Morning Joe,” which has consistently promoted Biden and aired relatively sympathetic interviews with the president and Vice President Harris.
Biden is known as a morning show power watcher and reportedly speaks regularly with co-host Joe Scarborough, which is why it was so surprising when the host opened Friday morning’s broadcast by saying Biden “tragically fell short last night.”
Scarborough said he loves the president and believes he has run a productive administration, but added that “Donald Trump lied again and again and Joe Biden has failed to counter any of those lies.”
Most strikingly, Scarborough predicted that Trump will be re-elected in November “unless things change.”
On Monday morning, Scarborough co-host Mika Brzezinski took a different view, suggesting calls for Biden to quit the race were premature.
“I don’t think it’s over yet,” she said, “… You know, me and my family have known this man for decades, and so has his family, and of course I know them personally, and I still believe in Joe Biden.”
Still, she said it was “a total disaster by any standards.” “More than three days after the debate, it’s still hard to understand what the president said: his weak, raspy voice; his inability to complete basic thoughts; and, most of all, his failure to call out Donald Trump’s constant lies.”
Mark Feldstein, a professor of broadcast journalism at the University of Maryland, said the impression the debate left on viewers was so strong that it would have been hard for even Biden’s biggest media allies to distort it.
“Trying to pretend this wasn’t an unmitigated disaster would undermine the credibility that MSNBC prides itself on,” he said.
But after the debate, the criticism was not unanimous. MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell on Thursday night denounced the importance of “optics” in presidential elections. “What’s happening here is that imagery has come to dominate how we view a presidential election,” O’Donnell said.
While Psaki acknowledged that Biden’s performance was flawed, she said replacing him with a new nominee “would be very messy and potentially very divisive.” (During a guest appearance on ABC, she likened it to a plot twist on “The West Wing.”)
In post-debate comments, MSNBC host Chris Hayes praised Biden’s performance as president but drew a line between his accomplishments and his appeal as a candidate.
“The president’s job is to make decisions,” he said. “The presidential candidate’s job is to communicate. … I think Joe Biden has a very good track record when it comes to making decisions, but I think he’s a very poor communicator at this point.”
