A growing number of Democrats as well as election mega-donors have expressed concern about Biden's performance in the first presidential debate, which has been compounded by numerous gaffes and blunders in the following days, pushing them to call for the POTUS' withdrawal in the election race to give way to a younger candidate.
Senior contributor to Fox Business and columnist for the New York Post Charles Gasparino reported that the CEO, who knows Biden closely, said that the president will stay in the race and that he will not bow down to party elites. "No f**king way he's dropping out," the friend reportedly said. He added that Biden could not care less what the elite in his party or the fundraisers think. He claimed that the POTUS "really hates them and he'll take their money but he knows they look down on him as some rube."
"Plus he thinks he earned the presidency after trying so many times and there's no way he's giving it up to go down in history as a loser who dropped out because he isn't tough enough. He only cares about his wife and family and he will tell everyone else to f*#ck off," the friend concluded.
The 81-year-old commander-in-chief has also publicly declared he is "not going anywhere" and at the NATO summit last week, offered a lengthy and mostly steady rebuttal to his detractors.
Following the CNN debate on June 27, Lloyd Doggett, a 15-term Texas congressman, said that it was time for Biden to "make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw" as he called for him to drop the race. He said he respected "all that President Biden has achieved" but that the Democrat had failed to "effectively defend his many accomplishments" on the debate stage.
He has since been joined by other House of Representatives colleagues, including Arizona left-winger Raul Grijalva who told the New York Times that Biden had to now "shoulder the responsibility" of holding the White House as well as Massachusetts' Seth Moulton who told WBUR that he no longer had confidence that Biden could beat Trump.
Illinois congressman Mike Quigley also made a direct plea to the president on MSNBC, saying that his "legacy is set" but it was time to "let someone else do this." They were also joined by Angie Craig, a Minnesota Democrat who fretted over Biden's "lack of a forceful response" during the debate. Also, Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said Biden could no longer "clearly, articulately, and strongly make his case to the American people." Several others share the same sentiments.
Even actor/Democrat activist George Clooney expressed his concern by penning an op-ed for the New York Times calling for the president to step down, despite having hosted a fundraiser for him several weeks ago.
"It's devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fundraiser was not the Joe 'big F-ing deal' Biden of 2010. He wasn't even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate," Clooney revealed. "Was he tired? Yes. A cold? Maybe. But our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn't see what we just saw. We're all so terrified by the prospect of a second Trump term that we've opted to ignore every warning sign." (Related: George Clooney the latest influential figure to call on Biden to step aside and urge Democrats to choose a new nominee.)
In a recent article published by CNN, it was claimed that former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have spoken privately about Biden and their concerns about how much harder they think it has become for the president to beat Donald Trump. Neither is allegedly quite sure what to do.
Many of Pelosi's colleagues see her as their only hope in bringing an end to the turmoil that has involved Democrats for the last two weeks. Several of them even believe that the end can come if and when she tells Biden that he has to drop out. Pelosi has spoken to Biden since the debate, but in the time since, she has made clear that she does not see Biden's decision to stay in the race as final.
Meanwhile, several leading party members felt being left in the middle as Obama continued to stay mum and not make any public comment for the last weeks. After the debate, the former president posted on X, "Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know," reiterating that sentiment at a fundraiser in New York for House Democrats the night after Biden's performance.
According to the news outlet, the former president had not even planned to make any public statement, but Biden and Obama's aides coordinated to get that post out in a way that reflected Biden's campaign talking points that Obama's first reelection debate in 2012 went badly, too, and it didn't end up ending his campaign.
CancelDemocrats.news has stories related to conflicts within the left-leaning political party.