Gretchen Whitmer Defends Biden, Says He Keeps ‘Really Aggressive Calendar’

Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer — who has been floated as a potential replacement candidate if President Joe Biden drops out of the race — defended her party’s presumptive nominee in a USA Today interview published on Tuesday.

In the interview which focused on the release of her book, titled “True Gretch,” Whitmer came to the defense of the 81-year-old Biden, telling USA Today that the president keeps a “really aggressive calendar and he’s showing up.” The Michigan governor said Biden’s poor debate performance against former President Donald Trump was “a 90-minute snapshot of someone who has been back and forth to Europe twice in one week.”

“But a 90-minute snapshot of a person with high integrity who’s served his country for decades − no one’s as good as their best 90 minutes or as bad as their worst 90 minutes,” Whitmer said, using a line of argument similar to one Biden has used to explain his debate performance. “You should be judged by the service and what you’ve been able to get accomplished, and he’s showing up with the receipts.”

“[A]s I said, I think that this is a 90-minute snapshot of someone who has been back and forth to Europe twice in one week. That’s a brutal calendar for a 52-year-old,” added Whitmer, who is 52. “And so I think about all the extraordinary things that people see, but don’t actually pause and say, wow, he actually keeps up this really aggressive calendar and he’s showing up, and certainly there’s that debate performance, and then there’ll be millions others where he’ll demonstrate the vigor and the capacity.”

White House aides told Axios that they usually try to keep Biden on a schedule that begins at 10:00 a.m. and ends at 4:00 p.m., saying the president is much more likely to have verbal lapses outside of those hours. Multiple sources also told The Wall Street Journal that, in June 2022, the president did not attend a meeting with world leaders in the early evening because he had to go to bed.

Biden’s health and mental state have been questioned by Republicans and conservative media outlets since the beginning of his term, but after his disastrous showing at the debate last month, some Democrats and Left-leaning political pundits have expressed concern about Biden’s ability to run an effective campaign. Whitmer was the subject of some speculation about potential replacements for Biden atop the Democratic Party ticket, but she has repeatedly said that she remains committed to helping Biden win re-election.

After the debate, Whitmer denied a POLITICO report that claimed she had told Democratic Party Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon that Michigan was now unwinnable for Biden. The Democratic governor addressed that report again in her interview with USA Today, saying, “Jen had reached out to me to touch base after the debate, and the nature of our conversation was me for a thousandth time reiterating Michigan’s just tough terrain.”

“[T]he Biden campaign I think had a lot of high-level people reaching out to leaders across the country, and so I think it was just a routine call of the same nature that many of my colleagues fielded as well,” Whitmer added.