White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is defending President Joe Biden’s recent remarks surrounding his debate performance.
“Last night…the president blamed jet lag for his debate performance, but he was back stateside well over a week. So, does he really need more than a week-and-a-half to recover from traveling in Europe?” a reporter asked during Wednesday’s press briefing.
Jean-Pierre pushed back, stating not only did Biden have “two major trips,” he also did “his presidential duties,” prepared for the debate, “and on top of that, there was obviously the jet lag … also he had a cold.”
The reporter pressed that there seem to be “new excuses” since the debate “of what went wrong then.”
During a campaign event on Tuesday in Virginia, Biden said, “I decided to travel around the world a couple of times. I didn’t listen to my staff,” ABC News reported.
The president said he “came back and nearly fell asleep on stage.” He also called it “not an excuse but an explanation.”
Watch the video below:
The topic was asked about another time during the press briefing:
Biden returned to Washington, D.C., 11 days prior to the first 2024 presidential debate.
As Politico reports: “Biden went to France for the 80th anniversary of D-Day in early June, then to Italy for the G7 meeting on June 12. The president followed that up with a Los Angeles fundraiser on June 15. He returned to Washington on June 16, or 11 days before the debate. He and his team holed up at Camp David for prep for nearly a week prior to the event with Trump in Atlanta.”
Jean-Pierre was also asked if Biden were considering stepping down, to which she said, “Absolutely not.”
The White House and Biden campaign responded to a report by The New York Times on Wednesday that claimed Biden has “told a key ally that he knows he may not be able to salvage his candidacy if he cannot convince the public in the coming days that he is up for the job after a disastrous debate performance last week.”
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, “That claim is absolutely false. If the New York Times had provided us with more than 7 minutes to comment we would have told them so.”
