Tapper Confronts Democratic Senator With Clips of Biden’s Stumbles: ‘It Is Not Honest to Say It Was Just One Night’

The Lead anchor Jake Tapper grilled Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) about President Joe Biden’s debate stumbles, repeatedly confronting him with video clips of the president and rebuffing Coons’ efforts to shrug it off as a bad night.

Tapper began the roughly twelve-and-a-half minute segment Monday afternoon by playing several clips of Biden’s roughest moments from the debate, which the CNN anchor moderated with his colleague Dana Bash.

“How do you explain the performance at the debate and moments like that?” Tapper asked Coons.

The senator replied that Tapper had shown “what was probably the most difficult moment to watch” from the debate, and then pivoted to attacking former President Donald Trump for “unleashing a torrent of lies, of invective, of vengeance.” Coons also mentioned Biden’s “forceful and clear and engaging speech” at a campaign rally in North Carolina the day after the debate.

“Everybody has a bad night,” Coons added, saying that he was urging the Biden team to “reassure folks in the media and the general public” by doing more unscripted interviews with reporters and small groups of voters, town halls, and so on.

“So, with all due respect it is not– it is not honest to say that this is just one night,” said Tapper, bringing up “another moment like this, not just a senior losing a train of thought, but something else going on here,” categorizing it as “some sort of a glitch” as Biden attempted to introduce Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

“I don’t know what that was,” said Tapper about the video clip.

“That doesn’t trouble me at all,” said Coons, arguing that he could find “a dozen clips of me, of you, of anybody who’s on TV, who speaks publicly all the time losing their train of thought,” before bringing up Trump’s many gaffes and odd comments, the “long stretches where he is saying nonsense, where he’s talking about whether he’d rather be electrocuted or eaten by a shark, where he’s saying nonsensical things about forests bursting into flame or windmills causing cancer.”

Coons brought up how so many people who worked in Trump’s White House have said he is “not morally fit to be president and refused to support him,” in contrast to the Biden cabinet members and many Democratic senators and governors who were backing the president.

He repeated again his recommendation to the Biden campaign that Biden needs to “reassure folks by doing some unscripted, engaging public events soon,” because “otherwise, we’re going to keep having this exact exchange until the cows come home and maybe until November.”

Tapper objected to Coons’ argument that media outlets were not reporting on Trump “saying odd or potentially distressing things,” saying, “I think that we’ve been doing that since 2015,” along with reporting about former Trump administration officials who were not endorsing him.

“I don’t think it’s fair to compare you or me losing our train of thought with whatever we saw in the debate stage on Thursday and that little clip from two weeks ago,” said Tapper.

The conversation eventually ended after a discussion of Biden sitting down for an extended live press conference or interview, which Coons reiterated was his recommendation to the campaign.

Watch the clip above via CNN.