US President Joe Biden has no way to recover from the debate disaster and needs to drop out of the race, multiple campaign aides have told NBC News.
The 81-year-old Democrat has been under increasing public pressure from the media, senior party members, donors, and celebrity sympathizers to step down after a catastrophic performance in the June 27 debate with Republican challenger Donald Trump.
“No one is denying that the debate was a setback,” campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon and campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a memo to staff, leaked to NBC on Thursday. “But Joe Biden and this campaign have made it through setbacks before.”
Others were more blunt. “He needs to drop out,” one Biden campaign official told NBC, speaking on condition of anonymity. “He will never recover from this.”
“No one involved in the effort thinks he has a path,” said a second campaign aide.
Another campaign worker described Biden’s chances of winning the November election as “zero.” Multiple aides have raised concerns that the president’s performance might spill over to down-ballot races, costing Democrats seats in Congress.
Biden called into a friendly MSNBC show on Monday and insisted he was “not going anywhere” and that he would be the party’s nominee. However, NBC’s sources said that it was a “widespread” feeling in both the campaign and the party that the Democrats should nominate someone else, such as Vice President Kamala Harris.
Meanwhile, CNN has revealed that Biden’s aides have been scripting and orchestrating cabinet meetings in a sort of a stage production. The last full cabinet meeting was on October 2 last year, according to the outlet.
The White House responded by providing a statement from Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who called the way the meetings have been run “standard practice for any administration.” CNN sources, however, said that this was definitely not the case under President Barack Obama, when Biden was his vice president.
Last week, it was revealed that a Parkinson’s Disease expert has visited the White House at least eight times over the past year. If anyone dares question the president’s health or fitness, however, Biden’s aides “beat the s**t out of” them and insist they “stay on message,” a top Democrat close to Biden’s inner circle told CNN.