Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is being called out by critics after he refused to respond to a question from a CNN host about when he was aware of former President Joe Biden’s obvious mental decline while in office.
During an interview with CNN’s Kasie Hunt, the New York Democrat refused to directly answer the question, saying instead that he and his party were “looking forward” and focused on opposing President Donald Trump and the GOP, even if their policies are good for the country.
As part of the upcoming book “Original Sin,” which was co-written by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson and examines Biden’s decline and the efforts made by those around him to conceal it, Hunt posed a question to Schumer that essentially echoed the classic inquiry: “What did you know, and when did you know it?”
“Did you really not have any idea that he was not fit to serve a second term?” she asked.
“Kasie, we’re looking forward. We have the largest Medicaid cut in front of us, we have the whole federal government at risk —” Schumer responded before Hunt cut him off.
The host reminded Schumer that the central premise of the book was that Biden’s apparent lack of fitness for office—and his insistence on running again—might be the reason the Democrats were facing a second term under President Donald Trump.
“We’re looking forward,” Schumer repeated.
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Later, CNN host Abby Phillips’ panel examined Schumer’s reported role in covering up Biden’s cognitive decline, with the harshest criticism coming from conservative Scott Jennings.
“Chuck Schumer, according to an excerpt of the book, this is what it says. Schumer wasn‘t concerned about Biden‘s acuity, but he was worried about the optics. Another wedding guest who sat at Schumer‘s table, this was at a wedding, recalled him saying, ‘If things go south at the debate, me, Barack [Obama], Nancy [Pelosi], and Hakeem [Jeffries] have a Plan B,” Phillips said. “Schumer would later deny it. It‘s a political problem that we have here.”
“I mean, ‘go south’ at the debate in that Joe Biden totally, you know, had a malfunction the way we saw? Or did he mean just go south at the debate like he doesn‘t perform?” Jennings broke in.
“It could have been that,” Phillips responded.
“The fact that he was only concerned about the optics and not about the fact that the president of the United States might be in cognitive decline, might be mentally impaired, to me, speaks volumes about the lack of character of Chuck Schumer,” Jennings said.
“But the idea that we did not know about this for the years leading up to the presidential campaign, we all saw it with our own eyes. Video after video, speech after speech, statement after statement. The Hur report, the fact that we have people saying today, ‘Oh, I didn‘t know. We had no idea,’ is outrageous. That‘s number one. Number two, the cover-up is outrageous. And number three, people were arguing with a straight face that this man could serve four more years, until, of course, it became untenable at the debate,” Jennings continued.
“Honestly, Jake and Alex have done a great service here. This book needs to be written. These stories need to be told because we‘ve lived through the greatest scandal in modern American political history. The cover-up of the decline of the president, the argument that he could serve four more years…if he were in office today, if he had somehow won and were in office, you‘d have the same people on TV today saying, he‘s fine behind closed doors, he‘s fine. And you know it,” he said.
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