Vice President Kamala Harris struggled to defend President Joe Biden following his widely criticized debate performance on Thursday night against former President Donald Trump.

Appearing on CNN, host Anderson Cooper asked Harris if she thought Biden needed to step aside.

“Yes, there was a slow start, but it was a strong finish,” she claimed. “And what became very clear through the course of the night is that Joe Biden is fighting on behalf of the American people on substance, on policy, on performance.”

Cooper immediately interrupted her and said: “I’m sorry on substance and policy and performance tonight. I mean, the president’s performance tonight clearly was disappointing for his supporters. CNN is reporting Democratic lawmakers watching the debate were worried, worried about the president’s performance. One said it was a disaster. Another called it a train wreck. Those are Democrats.”

Harris refused to push back on Cooper again after the journalist noted that Biden failed to perform on the debate stage.

“I got the point that you’re making about a one-and-a-half-hour debate tonight,” she said. “I’m talking about three and a half years of performance in work that has been historic.”

When Cooper again pressured her on the debate, she lashed out: “I’m not going to spend all night with you talking about the last 90 minutes when I’ve been watching the last three and a half years of performance.”

She again admitted that Biden did not start well, which she said was “obvious to everyone”.

When asked if that is how Biden is every day, Harris refused to answer the question and instead claimed that “Joe Biden can make it happen.”

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President Joe Biden struggled from the moment that CNN’s presidential debate started on Thursday evening in the first official event in the rematch of the 2024 presidential election.

CNN’s Jake Tapper opened the debate by asking Biden about voters’ top concerns: the economy and inflation.

“What do you say to voters who feel they are worse off under your presidency than they were under President Trump?” Tapper asked.

Biden responded by blaming the former president for the coronavirus pandemic and claimed that the economy was in a “freefall” when he took over when, in reality, the economy had already shown strong signs of bouncing back before Biden was sworn into office and later passed a massive spending package that triggered the inflation crisis.

“The pandemic was so badly handled. Many people were dying,” Biden claimed, even though more people died during the pandemic under the Biden administration than during the Trump administration.

“All he said was it’s not that serious, just inject a little bleach in your arm,” Biden claimed. “You’ll be all right.”

He blamed his poor numbers on what he claimed Trump left him and “corporate greed” before claiming he lowered the cost of an insulin shot from $400 to $15.

Trump responded to Biden’s remarks by saying that when he was president, the U.S. had “the greatest economy in the history of our country,” a statement that was largely true prior to the pandemic.

“The only jobs he created are for illegal immigrants and bounce-back jobs, they’re bounced back from the COVID,” Trump said. “He has not done a good job. He has done a poor job. And inflation’s killing our country. It is absolutely killing us.”

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