Democratic lawmakers, feeling frustrated and defensive about their political predicament, are lashing out at the media for its relentless focus on questions about whether President Biden is mentally and physically fit to serve four more years in office, and how doubts about Biden have divided their own party.
Senate Democrats had gotten use to the media spotlight on Capitol Hill being focused on former President Trump.
Even though Trump hasn’t been in the White House since January 2021, he spawned more than enough controversies — ranging from his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen to his regular attacks on Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) to his indictments on 91 felony charges — to keep Republican lawmakers busy deflecting tough questions about the former president.
Some Senate Democrats now fear that on top of their other problems, including inflation, uncontrolled migration at the southern border and Biden’s low job approval ratings, they’ve lost the media, at least for now.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a national co-chair of Biden’s campaign, got into a testy exchange with reporters when asked about fellow Democratic senators’ warnings that Biden could lose to Trump in a landslide.
“Have any of you asked any of us about Trump’s demonstrable unfitness to serve?” Coons demanded of members of Capitol Hill’s press corps.
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“We have two men running for the presidency of the United States and for 10 days all I’ve gotten from any of you is questions about Biden and his path to victory,” Coons said, clearly irritated by what he sees as unbalanced coverage about the presidential race.
He criticized media pundits for hammering away at Biden for his flubbed answers at the debate in Atlanta while largely ignoring Trump’s “lies” on stage.
“Donald Trump’s performance at the debate? Shocking. Filled with lies,” Coons said. “How many days have you asked me about … Trump? Given this NATO week, given we all just met with Zelensky.”
Coons criticized reporters for putting too much focus on a few senators, such as Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), who said Biden is headed for defeat in November, arguing they represent only a small minority of the Democratic caucus.
“Have there been a dozen others who have come forth and said now that Michael has said that, they share the same view? I don’t think so,” he said.
Republicans appear relieved that for the entire week after the July 4 recess, they were free to roam the hallways of Capitol Hill largely unbothered by thorny questions about Trump or any of the divisions within their own party.
“I love it,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) remarked as he walked by a stakeout of television and print reporters camped outside the Judiciary Committee hearing room without stirring any interest.
Biden took a shot at the media’s coverage of his race during a Friday rally at Renaissance High School in Detroit.
“They’ve been hammering me because I sometimes confuse names,” Biden said, while the crowd booed at the mention of the national press.
“You made me the nominee. No one else. Not the press, not the pundits, not the insiders, not donors,” he declared to the crowd. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), a Trump supporter, said earlier this month that Biden had “lost the media” and predicted his campaign is “toast.”
Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) accused journalists of “being offended” about Biden running for a second term, implying that the media are driving the story of the president’s political woes more so than what disillusioned Democratic lawmakers or disgruntled voters have said.
“Joe Biden is our guy, he’s my guy and he’s the only guy ever to kick Trump’s a–. He’s the guy, I don’t know why everyone in your business seems to be so offended by that,” Fetterman fumed when he was surrounded by a pack of reporters after Democratic senators discussed Biden’s political viability at a lunch meeting off the Senate floor.
One Democratic senator who requested anonymity to discuss Biden’s tough political predicament observed that the Biden campaign is scrambling to shift the focus to Trump but that the media and the steady stream of Democrats calling for Biden to drop his reelection bid have kept the spotlight fixed firmly on his mental and physical fitness.
“His goal of course is to return the focus to Trump, but I don’t see how he accomplishes that when the American people and the press are continuously focused on Biden,” the senator said.
“If the question is focused on Biden’s suitability and Trump’s kind of coasting along,” it’s going to result in a “huge drop in enthusiasm” among Democratic voters, the source warned.
Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) complained it’s time for news directors and editors to move on to a new topic.
Asked how much longer Democrats can go back and forth on the question of whether Biden should remain the likely nominee, Durbin retorted: “As long as the cameras show up and the reporters show up asking the same questions every single day.”
“At some point, somebody at your station has to decide that there’s another issue,” Durbin told a television correspondent.
The No. 2-ranking Senate Democratic leader scoffed at the idea that Democrats who have questioned Biden’s viability, such as Bennet, or who have called on Biden to drop his reelection bid, such as Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), are driving the story.
“It is you, come on,” he said to the correspondent and other reporters that swarmed him after a Judiciary Committee hearing. “The fact of the matter is this is the No. 1 story and has been for 10 or 12 days.
“The reality is the American people, many of them, don’t understand why we’re paused on focusing on this instead of the issues that are important to their families,” Durbin said.
“The bottom line is he’s going to be the nominee. He’ll be nominated in Chicago and we’ll move forward with an aggressive campaign to win reelection,” he insisted, adding he doesn’t think the party will change its ticket.
Durbin argued that the media is blowing the story out of proportion by focusing on what he said is the relatively small number of lawmakers in both chambers calling on Biden to drop out of the race: one senator out of 51 Senate Democrats and 19 House members out of 213 members of the House Democratic Caucus.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a master of messaging strategy, has tried to sap the energy from press coverage about the divide within his caucus over Biden’s future.
Schumer has deployed the same dry refrain whenever asked about Biden’s problems: “As I’ve said before, I’m with Joe.”
That strategy has been undercut by some of his fellow Democrats, notably former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who went on NBC’s “Morning Joe” last week to suggest that Biden could still change his mind about running. She urged her colleagues to hold off on calls for him to drop out of the race until the conclusion of the NATO summit in Washington.