Steve Hayes SHAMES PBS Anchor Amna Nawaz: It's 'Crazy' to Insist Biden Was Fine In Private

Tim Graham
May 19th, 2025 6:12 AM
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On Sunday's Meet the Press, PBS News Hour anchor Amna Nawaz tried to repeat the Democrat party line that "to this day" they maintain they never saw Debate Babbling Biden in private. Stephen Hayes of The Dispatch shamed her for sticking to the spin against reality. "That's crazy. That is crazy for them to say."

First, NBC host Kristen Welker gently asked former Kamala Harris spokesperson Ashley Etienne about Biden's decline, only asking if this hurts Democrats, not if they were wrong to mislead the public. Etienne just spun that this was all a Trump distraction:

KRISTIN WELKER: Ashley, I have to turn to you and turn the conversation to former President Biden, all of the revelations this week. I do want to read something that a Biden spokesperson said about that audio that we heard from his conversation with Special Counsel Hur. He said “the audio does nothing but confirm what is already public.” Take us inside your conversations. How much does this moment hurt Democrats?

ASHLEY ETIENNE: I mean, I agree with the spokesperson. I don't think it really has any impact. But this is how I see it. The real question is: Why release this tape now? And it's clear to me that President Trump released the tape because he's trying to distract from his disastrous – unprecedented – disastrous first 100 days. I mean, we've all been talking about that at the table today. So to me that's what's at play. Imagine a situation where you're so desperate, so under water on every issue that you play your best card in the first six months of an administration. So the way I see this is: This is good for Joe Biden. It's good for the Democratic Party, because we can dispense with this now and not closer to the midterm election.

 

Then came the moment where PBS sounds like MSNBC, that you never give the Republicans an inch when it might damage Democrats. Welker could only frame this scandal as a challenge for Democrats, not a scandal. Nawaz wasn't much different from Etienne: 

 

WELKER: Amna, I keep hearing this word "trust," that Democrats feel like they've got to rebuild trust at this point.

AMNA NAWAZ: And I think that is the challenge. To Ashley's point, Democrats are going to be asked about this now on the back of the book, on the audio being released. If you had a concern that Biden was too old before, some of these things confirm that now. What I will say, the consistency that I'm hearing from some Democrats when they're asked about this, as I know you asked Senator Murphy – I've been asking senior Democrats when I speak with them too — people who were close to him who saw him regularly even in the final months of office maintain to this day they never saw anything like what they saw at the debate in private, and they also say it's not going to be an issue for them in 2028.

STEPHEN HAYES: But, I mean, I'm sorry. That is crazy. That's crazy for them to say. And one of the things that this book does is it provides chapter and verse, detail after overwhelming detail that they did know and that everybody –

ASHLEY ETIENNE: And here’s the real question –

HAYES: And, look, the public knew. We knew. We knew. We watched it!

Welker never raised the Biden issue in her interview with former Vice President Mike Pence. She had to ask multiple questions about January 6, but she couldn't ask why Vice President Harris repeatedly defended Biden's capability.

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