Democrats shocked by Joe Biden’s disappointing performance in the debate urged the US president on Tuesday to be transparent about his mental fitness, as he faced the first calls from his own party to quit the election.
Some supporters have expressed growing doubts about the 81-year-old Biden following last week’s televised debate with Donald Trump, when he stumbled over his words and appeared lost in his thoughts – raising concerns about his age.
Congressman Lloyd Doggett became the first Democratic lawmaker to publicly call on Biden to make way for another nominee. He said he hoped the president would make the “painful and difficult decision to withdraw.”
In her statement, Nancy Pelosi, the former House Speaker and a stalwart of the Democratic Party, said it was “fair” to ask whether Biden’s debate failure was a sign of a deeper problem rather than a one-time incident.
Biden hasn’t done any live interviews or press conferences since the debacle, meaning he hasn’t again had to deliver unscripted remarks under pressure.
ABC News announced that he would be interviewed by the network on Friday, and the first clip would be released that day.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre acknowledged Tuesday that the debate was “a bad night” for the president, but said Biden “knows how to come back” from adversity.
“We understand. We’re not extrapolating from what you all saw,” he told reporters. “I think the president’s work record certainly speaks for itself.”
He dismissed questions about whether Biden would need to take a cognitive test and said the president would speak to high-ranking Democrats before holding a press conference during the NATO summit in Washington next week.
– ‘Frightened’ –
The polling gap between the president and his Republican predecessor has been narrow and roughly constant for months, with Trump showing slight leads in all the crucial swing states.
Biden pushed for an unusually early first debate in hopes he could stir up the race while there was still time to gain momentum — but his plan backfired.
Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse told WPRI-TV he was “quite horrified” by the president’s performance during the 90-minute CNN match, which was watched by more than 50 million Americans.
Jared Golden, a vulnerable Democrat in a conservative-leaning House district, surprised people in Maine by writing an op-ed in his local newspaper in which he said Biden’s poor performance was “no surprise.”
“It doesn’t bother me as much as it does other people, because the outcome of this election has been clear to me for months: Donald Trump is going to win, even though I don’t plan to vote for him. And I’m okay with that,” he said, making clear that he believes American democracy will prevail.
The White House has always ignored concerns about Biden’s mental acuity, sometimes with apparent irritation.
His campaign — under pressure over its strategy — lashed out at “self-important podcasters” in a memo widely seen as a dig at a group of former Barack Obama staffers and denounced demands from the “bed-wetter brigade” for Biden’s ouster.
But Democratic Vermont Senator Peter Welch told news website Semaphore on Tuesday that Biden’s team had “a dismissive attitude toward people who are raising questions for discussion.”
– slowed down –
Biden’s progress has clearly slowed in the past year.
For several months, the president, who has fallen several times in public, has stopped using the elevated gangway on his plane and has preferred to use shorter, more stable stairs.
He also had assistants surround him for the short walk from the White House to his helicopter on the lawn, so cameras wouldn’t focus on his stiff gait.
Biden, who has always been prone to making mistakes, has not held a lengthy press conference since January 2022 and spends nearly every weekend at his Delaware home with no official schedule.
Recently when he visited France to commemorate the landing of Allied forces in 1944, he went straight from the airport to his hotel, where he stayed for an entire day and did not attend any public events.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)