“The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert pushed back against former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre‘s suggestion that Democrats’ calls for Joe Biden to step aside in 2024 were a “betrayal” of the former president.
During their interview, Colbert inquired into Jean-Pierre’s decision to leave the Democratic Party this past summer. “You believe that the Democratic Party betrayed Joe Biden,” Colbert noted, before asking, “In what way?”
In response, Jean-Pierre, who became the first Black person and first openly LGBTQ person to serve as White House Press Secretary during Biden’s presidential tenure, said she was appalled by the “visceral reaction” people had to Biden’s now-infamous debate performance against President Trump last year.
“You’ve got to remember this is personal to me, because I was at the podium almost every day talking about this,” she noted. Colbert, however, countered, “It was personal to those of us who watched it, too, because it was a shock to our system to see that.” The CBS host also noted that he helped raise over $20 million for Biden’s 2024 campaign.
“It seemed like a dramatically different person,” Colbert said of watching Biden’s pivotal debate performance. “At 81 years old, that’s not entirely unexpected. You can imagine why people got so worried.”
Jean-Pierre then replied, “No one is saying that he didn’t age. I’m talking about did he have — the questions I was getting — the mental acuity? Was he able to govern? The man that I saw nearly every day was someone who was engaging, understood policy, and was always putting the American people first and it showed in what we were able to get done.”
“I don’t think anybody questioned his heart or his policies,” Colbert argued. “But it takes more than that to be the President of the United States. And in a moment of great pressure onstage, we saw someone shock us and worry us, and nothing could assuage that worry. So I don’t think it was necessarily a ‘betrayal’ of Joe Biden.”
“I disagree,” Jean-Pierre responded. “I saw every day a really ugly assault on someone who had 50-plus years of experience and who, again, objectively had done a good job as President of the United States, and it was heartbreaking to see that type of behavior.” While Colbert noted that he could not fault the “factual basis” of Jean-Pierre’s comments or her personal feelings about Biden’s presidency, he reiterated: “What happened was the debate performance. Everything is downstream of that.”
“No one is saying the debate performance wasn’t shocking, wasn’t a disappointment,” Jean-Pierre conceded, to which Colbert remarked, “‘Disappointment’ is such a light term!” Jean-Pierre replied that she was just using Colbert’s own words to describe the event. “We are never going to agree on this,” Colbert ultimately concluded, before sincerely telling Jean-Pierre, “I’m glad that you came here tonight.”
