Vice President Joe Biden and his family are still going through dealing with the death of his son Beau, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz said Tuesday, and he's still working to make the difficult decision on whether he'll seek the presidency.
"You never want to precede your child in death or, you know, have your child pass before you do, and deciding to run for president is a difficult decision," the Florida congresswoman told
MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on her noon news program. "I think that he's doing nothing more than any candidate would do or any potential candidate would do."
And the job of the national party is not to decide if a candidate should end up running, she said, but to support whichever nominee wins.
She said Tuesday night's debate will be much different than the GOP debates, where candidates "spent the entire debate sniping at one another, trying to out right wing one another, trying to out-Trump Donald Trump, talking about kicking immigrants out of the country, taking healthcare away from Americans."
Instead, Democrats will talk about different approaches to the same goal, helping Americans reach the middle class, she said.
"This is not a reality TV show," Wasserman-Schultz told Mitchell. "Our debate is going to focus on our candidates and the very serious issues that Americans care about, not, you know, trying to recreate a reality TV show that basically people are tuning in to watch the chaos."
And if Biden announces and shows up at the debate or enters the race, "of course he'll be welcome and it will create more interest," she said, noting that she's spoken to him many times but will remain neutral about whether he is in the race.
Wasserman-Schultz and her vice-chair, Hawaii Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, also have differences about
whether Gabbard should be at the event.
"The congresswoman was asked to focus on our candidates on the issues that are important to Americans to draw a contrast with the Republicans," Wasserman-Schultz said. "We are a big tent party and welcome those opinions. This debate and every debate going forward is about the issues. She is continuing to focus on process, which she's entitled to do. We asked if she could focus on those issues and she chose not to come because I guess she can't."
But Gabbard, who was on the same program later, told Mitchell that what Wasserman-Schultz was "just not true."
She said she had commented on MSNBC that she thinks more are debates needed, "and the very next day got a message saying that if I'm going to continue talking about that, that I shouldn't go to the debate."
But Gabbard said it's not surprising that Wasserman-Schultz would say such a thing.
"About a month ago, shortly after I called for more debates, the chairwoman said publicly that she had communicated and consulted with vice chairs and officers of the DNC prior to making her decision, both about the number of debates as well as this retribution policy of the exclusivity clause," Gabbard said. "The fact is, there was no communication or no consultation with the vice chairs and officers, of which I am one."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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