Liberal media pundits melt down over Biden’s horrendous debate performance: ‘Made me weep’
Democrat-leaning media columnists, network anchors and pundits melted down late Thursday night and into Friday morning after President Biden’s disastrous debate performance — with several urging the commander-in-chief to suspend his re-election campaign.
New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman said that watching his friend’s disastrous debate performance made him “weep” — and urged the commander-in-chief to put the nation’s interests first by not seeking re-election.
In an op-ed titled, “President Biden Is My Friend. He Must Bow Out of the Race,” Friedman, 70, wrote that he “cannot remember a more heartbreaking moment in American presidential campaign politics in my lifetime.”
“I watched the Biden-Trump debate alone … and it made me weep,” Friedman wrote.
“Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election.”
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, who reportedly gives advice directly to the president, also suggested Biden should step down — and had to eat some humble pie for dismissing questions about the president’s cognitive acuity months prior.
“This is a last chance for Democrats to decide whether this man we’ve known and loved for a very long time is up to the task of running for president of the United States,” Scarborough acknowledged during his Friday morning broadcast.
“If he were CEO and he turned in a performance like that, would any corporation in America, any Fortune 500 corporation in America, keep him on as CEO?” he asked.
Just three months before, Scarborough claimed Biden was “far beyond cogent” and “better than he’s ever been.”
“Start your tape right now because I’m about to tell you the truth — and ‘F’ you if you can’t handle the truth,” he told viewers in March.
“This version of Biden — intellectually, analytically — is the best Biden ever. Not a close second, and I’ve known him for years,” Scarborough opined. “If it weren’t the truth, I wouldn’t say it.”
Friedman in his op-ed added that Biden’s “family and political team must gather quickly and have the hardest of conversations with the president.”
The president’s poor performance at the debate — during which he stumbled, froze and stared blankly — has prompted anguish and alarm in the Democratic Party, less than four months before the general election.
Within minutes of the debate ending, CNN chief national correspondent John King spoke about the spread of “a deep, a wide and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party.”
“It started minutes into the debate — and it continues right now,” King said. “It involves party strategists. It involves elected officials. It involves fundraisers.”
“And they’re having conversations about the president’s performance, which they think was abysmal, which they think will hurt other people down the party ticket — and they’re having conversations about what they should do about it,” he assessed.
“I love that guy,” CNN analyst Van Jones said of Biden later on the same panel. “But he had a test, to me, tonight to restore confidence … and he failed to do that.”
“It’s not just panic, it’s pain of what we saw tonight,” he added.
Friedman highlighted what he described as Biden’s integrity and accomplishments, but also emphasized the need for a new leader who could better tackle the challenges of the 21st century.
“If he caps his presidency now, by acknowledging that because of age he is not up to a second term, his first and only term will be remembered as among the better presidencies in our history,” he claimed.
The debate was widely seen as a make-or-break moment for Biden amid voter concern about his mental fitness — concerns that grew more acute Thursday night.
Friedman argued that a new Democratic candidate was necessary for the party to have any chance of beating Trump — an argument echoed by fellow Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff.
“The Democratic Party has some prominent figures who I think would be in a good position to defeat Trump in November,” Kristoff wrote in a late Thursday night op-ed. “This will be a wrenching choice.”
“But, Mr. President, one way you can serve your country in 2024 is by announcing your retirement and calling on delegates to replace you,” he said, “for that is the safest course for our nation.”
