House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries defended supporting Joe Biden’s reelection bid when asked to address Americans who felt “misled” about the president’s health during a Sunday interview with NBC News.

Jeffires was asked by Meet the Press anchor Kristen Welker about his public support for the president before last June’s debate against President-elect Donald Trump sunk Biden’s hopes for a second term.

Biden was portrayed throughout the latter part of his term as fit to serve another. After the debate, he was essentially forced out of the race by Democratic Party leadership.

On Sunday’s show, Welker asked the ranking House Democrat about comments he made last February about the president’s reelection prospects and asked him to react to them:

“There’s a lot of questions about Democrats’ role, speaking of 2024, that Democrats played in allowing President Biden to stay in the race as long as he did,” she said. “I want to play you something that you said back in February of 2024. Take a look.”

Welker aired a clip of The View‘s Alyssa Farah Griffin asking Jeffries if Biden was “the strongest candidate to defeat Donald Trump” or if it was time to “pass the baton.”

On the show, Jeffries said, “Well, Joe Biden is definitely the strongest candidate to defeat Donald Trump.”

Welker pressed the Democratic leader on the comments and asked him to address Americans who felt “misled” about Biden in the following exchange:

WELKER: What do you say to Americans who believe you and other top Democrats misled them?

JEFFRIES: Well, Joe Biden was the incumbent president at the time. He was the candidate at the time, and I supported him at the time, and that was the right thing to do, based on the incumbent president making the decision that he was going to run. Obviously, things changed in late June and early July, but I think what’s most important at this moment is not for us to look backward, but to look forward, solve problems for hard-working American taxpayers and get things done. That’s what the American people want to happen. That’s the message that I interpret from the November election, and that’s the work that House Democrats are prepared to do to make sure we’re improving the quality of life for working-class Americans, not the wealthy, the well-off or the well-connected.

WELKER: Leader Jeffries, I guess just bottom line. Do you believe you had a responsibility to be more forthcoming about what you had seen behind closed doors as it relates to President Biden?

JEFFRIES: What I saw behind closed doors was a president who was working hard to get things done to deliver for the American people on infrastructure, on driving down the high price of life saving prescription drugs, on bringing domestic manufacturing jobs back home to the United States of America. It’s important to understand that President Biden inherited three different catastrophes on Day One: a democracy catastrophe, a public health catastrophe and an economic catastrophe, all at the same time, and worked hard to put America in the strongest possible position moving forward.

Watch above via NBC News.

The post Hakeem Jeffries Says Supporting Biden ‘Was the Right Thing to Do’ After NBC’s Kristen Welker Asks Him If Dems ‘Misled’ Public first appeared on Mediaite.

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