In a major turn of events, the New York Times, the nation’s leading Democrat Party bullhorn, has called for President Joe Biden to step down from the race for reelection to the presidency.
The newspaper made the call in a Friday evening editorial penned by the newspaper’s editorial board. The board wrote that while Donald Trump is unworthy to be president, Biden can’t take him on in his addled condition.
“Donald Trump has proved himself to be a significant jeopardy to that democracy — an erratic and self-interested figure unworthy of the public trust. He systematically attempted to undermine the integrity of elections. His supporters have described, publicly, a 2025 agenda that would give him the power to carry out the most extreme of his promises and threats. If he is returned to office, he has vowed to be a different kind of president, unrestrained by the checks on power built into the American political system,” the newspaper wrote.
“Mr. Biden has said that he is the candidate with the best chance of taking on this threat of tyranny and defeating it. His argument rests largely on the fact that he beat Mr. Trump in 2020. That is no longer a sufficient rationale for why Mr. Biden should be the Democratic nominee this year.
“At Thursday’s debate, the president needed to convince the American public that he was equal to the formidable demands of the office he is seeking to hold for another term. Voters, however, cannot be expected to ignore what was instead plain to see: Mr. Biden is not the man he was four years ago,” the Times wrote.
“The president appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant. He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He struggled to respond to Mr. Trump’s provocations. He struggled to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans. More than once, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence.”
The newspaper then called Biden an admirable president and said the nation has prospered under his leadership, and that “the wounds ripped open by Mr. Trump have begun to heal. But the greatest public service Mr. Biden can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election.”
A week earlier, the same newspaper said in a headline, “How Misleading Videos Are Trying Biden as He Battles Age Doubts.”
The New York Times is the first major newspaper in America to call for Biden to drop out of the race and make way for someone more competent to take on Trump, the man who the mainstream media helped take down in 2020 and will not want to see as president again in 2024.
Numerous times this year, the Times has run opinion columns about how Biden’s age is a perception problem, not a governing one. But since early this year, the newspaper has been increasingly critical of Biden’s mental capacity to govern.
Earlier this year, Special Counsel Robert Hur, investigating Biden’s handling of classified documents after he left government in 2017, reported that he did not think Biden could stand trial for the offenses because of his incapacity to remember important events, including the death of his own son.
The Hur report described the 81-year-old president as an “elderly man with a poor memory.” Unable to take the stand in his own defense raised questions about whether he can be the leader of the free world.
House Republicans want the audio recordings of that five-hour interview with Hur, but Biden has asserted executive privilege. House Speaker Mike Johnson said the House Judiciary Committee will file a lawsuit against the Justice Department next week to enforce the subpoena for the tapes.
Rep. Mary Peltola of Alaska voted against the subpoena of the audio of the interview. On Meet the Press in December, Peltola defended Biden as mentally sharp and that “as a native person, I think age is a good thing. Wisdom and experience are a good thing. I think that Joe Biden’s mental acuity is very, very on. He’s one of the smartest, sharpest people I’ve met in D.C.”
Peltola has endorsed Biden for president but in an effort to change the subject, she has focused her campaign on fish.
