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On Wednesday’s CNN This Morning, during a discussion of President Joe Biden’s comments that seemed to call Donald Trump’s supporters “garbage,” CNN senior political analyst Mark Preston argued that the President would be better off to double down on his remarks instead of trying to take them back.

Preston — who is also credited on CNN.com as CNN’s Vice President of Political and Special Events Programming — argued that Democrats would have been better off if Biden had declared, “Yeah, I do mean all those racist supporters of Donald Trump — yeah, I do think that they’re terrible,” rather than look weak by backtracking.

After recalling that President Biden’s advisors had tried to clean up the remarks by claiming that Biden just meant that the comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, who recently called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” at a Trump event, was the only “supporter” of Trump’s the President was calling “garbage,” host Kasie Hunt went to her panel for reaction.

Axios’s Alex Thompson awkwardly argued that no one who has not spoken with Biden actually knows what the President really meant:

Yeah, well, no one here at this table knows what Joe Biden meant unless someone here has talked to Joe Biden when he made those — when he made those comments, and the sad reality is that they were indecipherable because this President is no longer able to coherently and consistently articulate a message. And that’s just the sad reality.

When Preston got to speak, he thought Biden would have been better off not to try to water down his meaning:

You know, I’m of the mindset that if you say, “You might as well just embrace it,” and I do think that that’s a problem for Democrats … You know, shocking that I would say that, but, you know, realistically, I do think if he said, “Listen, yeah, I do mean all those racist supporters of Donald Trump — yeah, I do think that they’re terrible,” I do think that people would look at the Democratic party a little bit different.

I think — look, I do think that the Democratic party in general doesn’t look like they are strong enough and they will always back off of things. And I think that when Joe Biden backs off of saying what he really believes, I don’t think that’s a good look.

Democrats “always back off”? That’s the CNN view.

Transcript follows:

CNN This Morning

October 30, 2024

6:04 a.m. Eastern

KASIE HUNT: And the reality is, of course, Biden’s team trying very hard to clean this up. I think they recognize the damage that has been done. What’s been the reaction from Harris’s team?

ALEX THOMPSON, AXIOS: Yeah, well, no one here at this table knows what Joe Biden meant unless someone here has talked to Joe Biden when he made those — when he made those comments, and the sad reality is that they were indecipherable because this President is no longer able to coherently and consistently articulate a message. And that’s just the sad reality.

That is why he’s no longer the nominee because, at the debate, we all saw very clearly. And it’s also why Kamala Harris does not want him on the trail. This is a guy who just last week referred to former Representative Gabby Giffords in the past tense even though she’s very much alive — is a person that last week said that he wanted to throw Donald Trump in jail and then very quickly tried to backtrack and say he just politically meant to lock him up. And we are in a sad scenario where clearly Joe Biden and the aides around him that want to make him feel better want him to be able to sort of be inserted into this race that see Kamala Harris’s election — potential election as an affirmation of his record, but that Kamala Harris does not want him to be inserted and would prefer that he basically be absent this last week of this election.

MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: You know, I’m of the mindset that if you say, “You might as well just embrace it,” and I do think that that’s a problem for Democrats —

HUNT (laughing): We’re going to ask our strategists over here in just a second.

PRESTON: You know, shocking that I would say that, but, you know, realistically, I do think if he said, “Listen, yeah, I do mean all those racist supporters of Donald Trump — yeah, I do think that they’re terrible,” I do think that people would look at the Democratic party a little bit different. I think — look, I do think that the Democratic party in general doesn’t look like they are strong enough and they will always back off of things. And I think that when Joe Biden backs off of saying what he really believes, I don’t think that’s a good look.