Following a mediocre press conference by President Biden, CNN’s Laura Coates took to her eponymous show on Thursday night to applaud a brilliant answer where there was none, to complain of “elementary” questions regarding his health, and to make an example of her own live mishap, as an example that “that’s sometimes what happens.”
At the top of the hour, Coates began her segment, speaking about Biden’s conference and the critics he was facing. However, after her voice gave out, the host had this to say in solidarity with Biden:
[Cough] Hold on, excuse me. [Cough] Now see, if I were running for president right now and this happened to my voice, would you say that I was no longer qualified. If this were happening and I was a candidate for office, would I be completely inept? Would you judge me differently than every other anchor who may have sneezed on air or cleared their throat differently? Would you look at it as a one-off for episodic in some way? Would you say to yourselves ‘this my friends is the very reason this person can no longer be trusted?’ Or what you say that maybe you'll have to wait and see how her voice performs for the rest of the show? Now, I didn't use that example willingly to make sure that you've got the point and drove it home. My voice did, in fact, give out. But that's sometimes what happens. But again, as I mentioned earlier, I'm not the one running for President and you don't have the same standard for me.
Coates is clearly behind in the liberal excuses, as covering Biden with claims of colds and voice failure are no longer enough for many voters. Yet, this was not the last time the host took the side of Biden, as she seemed to praise his answer to an interview question, not commenting on his very obvious struggle to answer:
President Biden tonight peppered with questions about his candidacy. He was asked if he would be willing to take a cognitive test. He was asked what he thinks about Democrats calling for him to step down. He was asked if he's the most qualified to beat Trump and you'd be forgiven if you thought he did not get a single question about policy. But he did. Including a couple from CNN, political and national security analyst David Sanger. Here's one of them.
She then played a clip of Sanger asking, “I'm not sure you answered on whether you would be ready to go deal with Putin and XI two or three years from now.”
After multiple pauses, and what seemed like a loss of thought, Biden answered the question, a feat that should be considered impressive by any means. Yet, Coates went on to talk about the supposed complexities of the question with Sanger using the dialogue as leverage to cite the allegedly impressive nature of the Biden’s answer, “You know before that exchange, you had asked Biden a pretty complex, complicated foreign policy question about Russia's relationship with China. And I wondered, and some people did wonder about the motivation compared to some of the other questions that were a little bit more elementary about his campaign. Were you trying to test his flow of information?”
Sanger replied, “Yes… What I wanted to do was just watch him pace through a complex but daily, not obscure, foreign policy problem involving our two biggest superpower rivals and he wound around a bit, but he did address it and hit all of the major points. I had to sort of step in and say, are you trying to disrupt it? And he said at one point, “Yes. But I'm not going to tell you how.”
The transcript is below, click “expand” to read:
CNN Laura Coates Live
7/11/2024
11:04:57 PM EST(...)
LAURA COATES: What would you have voters do? [Cough] Besides cough on live television? Hold on… [Cough] Not today, Satan. [Cough] Hold on excuse me. Now see, if I were running for president right now and this happened to my voice, would you say that I was no longer qualified. If this were happening and I was a candidate [Cough] for office would I be completely inept? Would you judge me differently than every other anchor who may have sneezed on air or cleared their throat differently? Would you look at it as a one-off or episodic in some way? Would you say to yourselves this my friends is the very reason this person can no longer be trusted? Or what you say that maybe you'll have to wait and see how her voice performs for the rest of the show? Now, I didn't use that example willingly to make sure that you got the point and drove it home. My voice did, in fact give out. But that's sometimes what happens. But again, as I mentioned earlier, I'm not the one running for president and you don't have the same standard for me.
(...)
11:50:42 AM EST
COATES: President Biden tonight peppered with questions about his candidacy. He was asked if he would be willing to take a cognitive test. He was asked what he thinks about Democrats calling for him to step down. He was asked if he's the most qualified to beat Trump and you'd be forgiven if you thought he did not get a single question about policy. But he did. Including a couple from CNN, political and national security analyst David Sanger. Here's one of them:
[Cut to video]
DAVID SANGER: I'm not sure you answered on whether you would be ready to go deal with Putin and Xi two or three years from now.
JOE BIDEN: I'm ready to deal with them now and three years from now. Look, um… the, ugh, like I said, I'm dealing with Xi right now and direct contact with him. I have no good reason to talk to Putin right now. There's not much that he is prepared to do in terms of accommodating any change in his behavior? And, but there isn't any world leader I'm not prepared to deal with.
COATES: David Sanger joins me now. David, good to have you here. You know before that exchange, you had asked Biden a pretty complex, complicated foreign policy question about Russia's relationship with China. And I wondered, and some people did wonder about the motivation compared to some of the other questions that were a little bit more elementary about his campaign. Were you trying to test his flow of information?
SANGER: Yes. Look, this is – the question that I asked which was just before the one that you showed on the clip was this, that during his presidency, we have seen a remarkable thing happen, which is that China and Russia have begun to come together, act together in partnership. And just yesterday, pushed by his administration, NATO came out and condemned the Chinese for giving the technology to the Russians that’s rebuilding their military and enabling them to fight in Ukraine.
So, my question to him was, are you prepared to disrupt the Russia-China relationship? I didn't say whether they would disrupt it overtly, covertly, and it's a subject that is debated in the Biden White House every single day. It's one he's never talked about. But I knew he knew about it in great length. And I've written a lot on this topic and so why I just wanted to see was I figured everybody will have asked by the time he got to me, if he got to me, “Are you leaving the ticket? Are you staying” and all that?
But I wanted to do was just watch him pace through a complex, but daily, not obscure foreign policy problem involving our two biggest superpower rivals and he wound around a bit, but, you know, he did address it and hit all of the major points. I had to, sort of, step in and say, “are you trying to disrupt it?” And he said at one point, “Yes. But I'm not going to tell you how.”
COATES: Were you satisfied to think that he was responding to you off the cuff with a basis of understanding from the briefings that you were aware that he’d be receiving?
SANGER: Yes. Yeah. I mean, I knew that he was discussing this topic with his aides, you know, very frequently. It's the biggest foreign policy problem in many ways that they face. The most complex and long-lasting. And I just wanted to see how he dealt with it.
The question that you showed Laura, which was, “Are you prepared three years from now to sit down and see Putin the way he did in 2021 is one meeting or with Xi Jinping?” was an effort to get him – this did not work as well – to address whether he thinks he would be in good enough shape three years from now to go, you know, one-to-one with Vladimir Putin.
He interpreted it somewhat differently. And basically said, I'm dealing with Xi now, I'll always be ready to go deal with them, but I am refusing to talk to Putin. It was an interesting answer. I was just trying to get him away – every time you ask him how he's going to be in the future, he tells you what he's done in the past. And I was just trying to see if I could get them to talk about the future.
