Will Biden Withdraw?

by Sharon Rondeau

(Jul. 2, 2024) — At 1:00 p.m. EDT Tuesday, White House incumbent Joseph R. Biden, Jr. will speak on the topic of “extreme weather.” His address follows Biden’s four-minute speech from the White House Monday night critical of the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion upholding the concept of presidential immunity for the president for official acts in office.

Since Thursday night’s debate with 2024 presumptive Republican nominee with 45th President Donald J. Trump in which Biden often lost his train of thought and appeared to have trouble focusing on responding to moderators’ questions, there have been increasingly strident calls for him to abandon his re-election bid.

Many Republican politicians and perhaps unexpectedly, customarily supportive media hosts and commentators, are now urging Biden to withdraw from the race, in some instances now revealing reports from White House staffers of declining mental ability over at least the last six months.

After the debate, a few Democrats were critical of Biden’s performance but stopped short of calling on him to withdraw from the race.

“Democrats are reeling,” Politico reported on Friday. “Joe Biden face-planted in one of the highest stakes moments of his political life —igniting widespread concerns among Democrats about his fitness as a candidate.”

Additionally, Fox News and ABC News’s Jake Tapper reported Tuesday, on Monday evening an unidentified number of Democrat governors held a conference call on the “Biden campaign.”

That follows a reported weekend meeting of Biden family members, after which it was announced Biden would continue his campaign.

Perhaps shockingly, Tapper, a co-anchor of the debate, on Monday faulted “Democratic officials” for “trying to spin this” after airing clips from Thursday’s debate in which Biden verbally stumbled.

Earlier Monday, Tapper revealed on his show, “The Lead,” the Biden campaign held a conference call with “party leaders telling them, ‘This, too, shall pass.'”

“There is a discernible pattern of Democratic officials seemingly trying to convince you, the public, to not believe what you saw and what you heard with your eyes and your ears Thursday night,” Tapper told his audience.

At 2:30 p.m., White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will give the first presser in approximately two weeks.

At 12:59 p.m. EDT, Fox reported that the first Democrat member of Congress, Lloyd Doggett, asked Biden to withdraw from the race. An effort was under way to interview Doggett on-air, “America Reports” co-anchor Sandra Smith said at 1:02 p.m.

Biden won an overwhelming number of votes during the primaries, and some legal commentators have opined he cannot be “replaced” on the 2024 presidential ballot unless he voluntarily withdraws.

“The dam is starting to break,” Democrat pollster Doug Shoen told Smith of Doggett’s stance at 1:09 p.m.

At 1:11, Smith announced she received a “two-minute warning” of Biden’s address on weather events, including Hurricane Beryl, and put forth the possibility that he might “go off-script.”

Should Biden withdraw, his vice president, Kamala Harris, whose approval rating is also below 40%, would presumably become the 2024 Democrat presidential nominee.

The Post & Email has previously covered questions arising over Harris’s constitutional eligibility as a “natural born Citizen” as required by Article II of the U.S. Constitution.

At 1:14, Fox panned to the climate press conference at the Washington, DC Operations Center and Biden’s approaching a podium at which a woman gave opening remarks.

At 1:17, Biden took the podium to speak about “the climate crisis.”