Drudge Report, the popular news website, was stacking up eye-opening headlines throughout the weekend --- “Staff hid decline from public” and “First Lady desperately clings to power” --- that describe a political stand-off following Biden’s disastrous debate performance just two days earlier.
On one side is the wagon-circling Biden family, which huddled together over the weekend, and a few Democrat politicians defending him, such as Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Rep. James Clyburn. According to Clyburn, Biden was the victim of “preparation overload” which is why he struggled to recall and recite numbers and statistics.
On CNN, Pelosi was confronted with a post-debate poll in which 72% said Biden is not mentally capable of remaining in office. She said Biden had a “bad night” at last week’s debate but told CNN she believes Trump – not Biden – has dementia because his “thoughts do not go together.”
On the other side, seemingly outnumbering Biden’s defenders, are newspaper editorials urging him to step down; wealthy donors threatening to hold back their donations; anonymous sources leaking their frustrations to the media; and liberal journalists who are expressing sympathy for Biden but are also stating the obvious.
“Watching Thursday’s debate, observing Biden wander into senselessness onstage, was an agonizing experience,” wrote New York editor David Remnick, “and it is bound to obliterate forever all those vague and qualified descriptions from White House insiders about good days and bad days.”
Maureen Dowd, the liberal New York Times columnist, published a weekend column that called Biden “selfish” and “surrounded by opportunistic enabled,” and a man who has “created a reality distortion field where we’re told not to believe what we’ve plainly seen.”
President Biden, she further wrote, has “clearly been declining for the last couple of years,” which she called a “dangerous development in a volatile world.”
According to an Associated Press story, published Saturday, frustrated DNC committee members described a weekend call with Jaime Harrison, the DNC chairman. Several unnamed committee members told the AP they feel like they are being "gaslighted" by leaders who are ignoring the "dire nature of the party's predicament."
The story said the chat function was disabled on the call, which prevented any questions from concerned committee members.
As the first post-debate weekend came to an end, another political story described a frustrated donor and Biden supporter, John Morgan. He is openly blaming top White House aides for President Biden’s debate performance, Politico reported.
Roy explains, defends 25th Amendment resolution
On Monday, in a lengthy post on X, U.S. Rep. Chip Roy sought to explain why he has introduced a resolution in the House that asks Vice President Kamala Harris and Biden’s cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him.
“It is undeniably true,” Roy writes, “that Joe Biden, with 200 days remaining in his term, is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office - including and in particular as commander in chief in a dangerous world.”
Citing the U.S. Constitution, Roy concedes Congress has “ZERO ability” to force Vice President Harris to use the 25th Amendment. So the reason for the resolution, he writes, is because Congress has a “obligation to speak out” and it is the duty of Congress to “do the right thing” for a President who is “mentally incompetent.”
In the post Roy acknowledges the bad politics of removing President Biden, which would likely introduce a stronger Democrat candidate to face Trump on Election Day. The reason to ignore the politics and remove Biden anyway, the Congressman concludes, is because “the dude has the nuclear codes.”
Veteran conservative activist Gary Bauer, of the Campaign for Working Families, tells AFN he cannot see Biden stepping down voluntarily.
"As long as they can get [Biden] to breathe, he is not going to step down from the presidency," Bauer says.
