Tapper presses Biden campaign co-chair on whether Biden is best candidate to go against Trump

Everyone has a bad night. And I think it was a weak performance in the debate. I don't think anyone in the

campaign

disagrees with that point, but I have been urging and I hope this moves forward for the president to reassure people in the media, the general public, the many editorial writers and others who I have expressed my concern in holding informal, unscripted meetings with journalists, with small groups of voters, in a town hall, so that they can see what I have seen with our president in the last few months and, of course, in the last few years. .

He's attractive, he's capable. He has an incredible record as president. I don't think you'll argue with it, Jake. But the central question is

whether

what you saw in those few moments of the debate and for much of the arc of that 90-minute debate, was someone who was having a difficult night or someone who was no longer up to the job and was in the setting in North Carolina. He wouldn't run if he wasn't sure he was up to the job. So, with all due respect, it's not honest to say that this is just one night. There have been moments like this that people have seen in front of the cameras and others and other moments without cameras.

Not there just two weeks ago. Let me show you this clip. There was another moment like this, not just a senior losing his train of thought, but something else was happening. Here is the. It was an event about immigration. He attempts to interview and introduce DHS Secretary Mayorkas. And there is some kind of failure. I do not know what it is. Let's roll up that tape. Thank you to all members of Congress and the Secretary of Homeland Security. I'm not sure of an additional way. Joking aside, Secretary Marcus, I don't know what that was. That doesn't worry me at all, Jake.

Frankly, you can play a dozen clips of me, of you, of anyone who's on TV, who speaks in public all the time, losing their train of thought, misstating who they're about to introduce, without having a moment. fluent. And if we're honest with each other, Jake, every time Donald Trump speaks in front of a rally, there are long stretches where he talks nonsense, where he talks about

whether

he'd rather be electrocuted or eaten by a shark, where he He's saying nonsense about forests bursting into flames or windmills causing cancer. So take that little clip and say, aha.

Senator Coons, be honest, you know our president is somehow not mentally formed and you have yet to present dozens and dozens of much more alarming examples of the former president. Let me cut to the chase with what I think is a simple but important moment of testimony, Jake. Only former President Trump has a vice president, a secretary of defense, a chief of staff and a national security advisor, who say he is morally unfit to be president and refuse to support him. The entire cabinet of our current president, the entire Senate in the Democratic group. Every governor I know who already supports Joe Biden continues to support Joe Biden.

And we interact with him and work with him regularly. So do all of us who are in public life and speak regularly have slip-ups and moments where we don't finish our sentence correctly or misidentify exactly who we are introducing? Absolutely. But I've been telling the

campaign

, the senior leadership, that our president needs to reassure people by holding some interesting, unscripted public events soon. Otherwise, we're going to continue having this exact exchange until the cows come home and maybe into November, which frankly I think is doing our country a disservice. So, first of all, I don't think it's accurate to suggest that the media hasn't provided or shown the American people clips of former President Trump saying strange or potentially distressing things.

I think we've been doing this since 2015. And obviously we've also been covering a lot of people who worked in the Trump administration who didn't support Donald Trump. If you want to talk about a confrontation between

candidate

s, I understand that that is not what I am talking about. And I don't think it's fair to compare you or I losing our train of thought to what we saw on the debate stage on Thursday and that little clip from two weeks ago. But let me move on to another question, because there is the question of what would happen if the Democratic Party decides to do something that you obviously don't think is wise?

The Biden campaign wrote in an email this weekend that if President Biden dropped out of the race, quote, we would switch to

candidate

s who polls show would be less likely to win than Joe Biden. The only person who has ever defeated Donald Trump, in quotes. The email then goes on to show polls conducted by honest partisan pollsters. They chose Vice President Harris, Governor Gavin Newsom, to be a judge and how they match up. To be honest, they are only one percentage point behind Joe Biden in those head-to-head matchups with Donald Trump. So it doesn't really seem like there's that much difference between the guy who's been president for over three years and spent tens, hundreds of millions of dollars running as the Democratic candidate.

And people who haven't even been running. What's your question, Jake? How does that explain your point? If Newsom is ousted, are Judge and Harris just one point worse than Biden in the head-to-head matchup? How is that like showing any kind of strength from President Biden? Jake, I may be missing something. You're asking me to explain and defend an email that I neither co-authored nor sent is your main question. Let me see if I can ask a question. Let me try again. Let me try again. I will try again. How would these other candidates know the repetitive question?

This is because you reject the notion that anything is actually happening beyond a bad night or a bad moment here or there. Let me ask you: do you really think President Biden is the strongest candidate to take on Donald Trump in November? I think Joe Biden is, for two things, the strongest and most successful president we have ever had in my lifetime, that is not the point. They've told it over and over again, and you can go up on stage and say, here's my record. I, in my inauguration speech, said I would bring Congress together and we would address infrastructure and manufacturing, lower prescription drug prices, and invest in restoring our competitiveness as a country.

And it would get us out of the pandemic and address the challenges I inherited from Donald Trump. And he has done a magnificent job. He can say the same thing as the other candidates, governors of different states, etc. I can't say that his vice president can say that she was a central part of that. And I think that makes an important argument. And this is the core point I think you're trying to make here, Jake. He needs to reassure people who repeat public performances that he is up to the task and address the central question you are asking me.

I have seen no evidence that our president is not up to the task of running for president and continuing to serve as president. So that's something it's up to our president to demonstrate to the public in the coming weeks. And I accept it as an open question and a challenge. But I do think he has the strongest record in his first three years that any of us can imagine. Just last month, our economy created more jobs, largely thanks to President Biden's leadership, than in the four years Donald Trump was president. Joe Biden has the strongest record.

We have an all-time high in the stock market and an all-time low in unemployment. We have crime going down. We have investments in manufacturing, you know, we are going in the wrong direction. And he could have a great platform to run for re-election. He's not the only Democrat who can run for president. That's not what I'm saying. But he is the strongest record that has ever been presented in this. I mean, he's given fewer press conferences, fewer interviews than any president in modern history, including the previous one who's now running for re-election. And, you know, all of this could be and this former one told more lies per sentence than any candidate.

This is this. This is not the discussion we are having. We could certainly have that conversation. I certainly didn't particularly care when President Biden said that no US service members had died in the previous four years. But moving on from things that were said that were not true. I think it's easy to resolve this right now if President Biden goes to the Brady Press Center. The press docket at the White House, and do it and give a two-hour press conference. Everyone would cover it live. The networks would probably cover it live. He could answer all these questions.

It's not crazy to expect what the president will do. And the fact is that the campaign knows that the White House knows that this is how this is resolved. You just put them in front of journalists. And it is handled with acuity, poise. We all see that it was just a coincidence. Oh my god, I can't believe it happened. And we continue forward. The fact that you didn't do that tells me a lot, Jake, what I just said maybe three times in this interview is what I urge and recommend. I believe the Biden family had a long-scheduled family retreat at Camp David, where they took a family photo and were discussing both this debate and the summer and their plans.

And I encourage you to add something like that to the show, whether it's a 60 Minutes interview or something at the White House podium or a town hall. That's not for me to decide. But that's what I've been encouraging our president to do. Democratic Senator Chris Coons of the Small Wonder State, Delaware. Thank my Lord. I appreciate it. Thanks, jake.