Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski pushed back hard to defend President Joe Biden against criticism from his own side of the aisle.

The MSNBC morning show opened its 6 AM hour with damning reports from Axios and Politico detailing Democratic anger with the White House for how they handled the post-debate access and transparency of the presumptive Democratic nominee,

As the calls from Democrats for Biden to end his reelection bid increased following his shaky performance during the presidential debate, Brzezinski said the situation was “delicate,” and that less than week since Biden’s bad night, everyone needed to calm down a bit. She told co-host Willie Geist:

So let’s just break this down a little bit, Willie. I just have a few thoughts after the first hour and what I just saw. You know, after a moment like this, only President Biden can tell us what needs to happen next or can show us, and I think a lot of this surmising out loud whether he should or shouldn’t is kind of useless. I know we’re in a time crunch, but this needs a week or two so everyone can see what they need to see.

She also brought up how Biden could be reacting to his son, Hunter Biden, being convicted while he was traveling abroad, addressing why the president’s son was sitting in on White House meetings:

We can’t surmise, and yes, there’s a lot of criticism now that he’s saying it was jet lag. I brought this up earlier — it was flying across 12 time zones when your son was convicted on felony counts that wouldn’t bring any others to court, but your son is convicted. So that emotional trauma happening while he’s abroad. So, yes, Hunter’s staying close with his dad right now. Showing he’s okay, showing they’re okay. I don’t see any problem with that. And again, compare all of that to the alternative, who moved his family in to work in the administration.

But mostly, Brzezinski wanted nervous Democrats — and possibly voters — to put things in perspective:

It just feels like, number one, people need to slow down. This is a very delicate situation and there are fair questions out there. But the noise and the move to move him out when we hadn’t had a chance to really recoup and see whether this was episodic or not, and also the lack of balance at the alternative, at looking at the alternative, where there may be a thousand reasons why an editorial board would have said that [former President] Donald Trump should step out of the race, and yet that just never happens.

But Geist pushed back:

Geist: I mean, without question, when you talk about the substance of what we saw last Thursday night, Donald Trump lied from start to finish, as we’ve pointed out many times.

Brzezinski: Correct.

Geist: That’s what he does. Most of what he says isn’t true, let’s be honest. But it is also true that people, Democrats, people who love Joe Biden, people were shaken by what they saw. And I don’t think most people are going to buy that he traveled across 12 time zones. He’d been home for 11 days. You’re the leader of the free world. You got to be up to it, even with the travel and all that.

Watch the video above via MSNBC.