President Joe Biden’s team hit back at the New York Times’ editorial board for telling him to drop out of the race following his embarrassing debate performance.
As the first major news outlet to demand the president bow out of his reelection bid, the New York Times published an opinion piece, titled “To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race,” on Friday.
“Mr. Biden is not the man he was four years ago,” the editorial board wrote.
Complaining that another term for former President Donald Trump would be disastrous for the country, the publication stated that Biden dropping out would be “the best chance to protect the soul of the nation.”
In response to the Times’ flaming debate review, Biden’s campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond said the publication’s endorsement does not mean anything to him.
“The last time Joe Biden lost the New York Times editorial board’s endorsement, it turned out pretty well for him,” Richmond told CNN on Friday.
During his first post-debate appearance, Biden admitted to an audience in Raleigh, North Carolina, that he was “knocked down” by Trump in the Thursday debate.
“I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to,” the president said Friday. “I know, like millions of Americans know, when you get knocked down, you get back up.”
Even former President Barack Obama conceded that his former vice president’s debate skills were not good, writing on X, “Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know.”
Despite this, Obama still maintained his endorsement of Biden:
Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know. But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself. Between someone who tells the truth; who knows right from wrong and will give it to the…
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) June 28, 2024
While the Times was the first mainstream U.S. newspaper to tell Biden to drop out, the Wall Street Journal soon followed suit.
The Journal’s editorial board published a scathing opinion piece later on Friday, titled “Democrats Can’t Avoid the Biden Problem.”
“The debate showed the President clearly isn’t up to four more years in office,” the subhead simply stated.
The editorial board did not hold back when describing Biden’s debating skills, honing in on his “weak voice” and “blank stare”:
This isn’t a partisan thought; it’s a patriotic one. Democrats across the country were privately saying the same thing last night, and some of them on TV not so privately. Mr. Biden lost the debate in the first 10 minutes as he failed to speak clearly, did so in a weak voice, and sometimes couldn’t complete a coherent sentence. His blank stare when Donald Trump was speaking suggested a man who is struggling to recall what he has been prepped for weeks to say, but who no longer has the memory to do it.
Atlantic columnist Mark Leibovich also wrote a piece, titled “Time to Go, Joe,” in which he argued that “Biden needs to step aside—for the sake of his own dignity, for the good of his party, for the future of the country.”
“Biden’s voice kept trailing off, and he kept getting lost in his train of thought,” Leibovich, who also spent several years at the New York Times, wrote.
A Financial Times opinion piece, written by columnist Edward Luce, stated, “It is not too late for Joe Biden to go.”
“Democrats already knew the risks of replacing their candidate. The upsides are suddenly clearer,” he argued following the lackluster debate.
Biden has shown no signs that he agrees with calls to drop out in order to give his party a better chance at beating Trump in November.
