The New York Times has demanded president Joe Biden to drop out of the race for The White House.
In a scathing opinion piece, the Times’ Editorial Board observed that Biden appeared to be a ‘shadow’ of himself and that the argument that he was the best Democratic candidate to take on Trump was no longer valid.
Unable to ignore the president’s awful performance, the publication put it bluntly, saying: ‘Mr. Biden can’t continue this race.’
The paper agreed with Biden’s opinion that another Trump presidency would be a disaster for the country and would imperil the nation’s democracy.
They wrote glowingly about Biden’s administration, calling him an ‘admirable president.’
Biden gave a faltering performance at Wednesday’s debate, something that the New York Times’ Editorial Board called a ‘shadow’ of the president
Trump said that Biden ‘didn’t know what the hell he was doing’
This marks a U-turn for the ‘newspaper of record,’ who drew flak on Friday morning after relegating their print coverage of his disastrous debate performance to a small paragraph on their front page.
Instead, the paper focused on issues that were largely peripheral: Iran escalating their nuclear work and an analysis of Julian Assange’s legal drama.
This was odds with other major papers like the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, each of which reported on the debate in the print editions of their papers.
At the bottom of their morning paper, The New York Times merely directed their readers to check out their coverage of the debate online.
This sparked controversy with many pundits questioning whether the Times would have been so comparatively silent on the matter if Biden had performed better or if Trump had performed worse.
The opinion published by paper’s editorial board on Friday evening marked a change of heart for the liberal paper.
Although the editors said that left with the choice between Trump and Biden, ‘the sitting president would be this board’s unequivocal pick,’ the meaning of the piece was clear: Biden should step down in the election.
The editorial board wrote: ‘The president appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant. 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 paper sounded its oft-repeated alarms about a second Trump White House. They wrote, ‘Trump has proved himself to be a significant jeopardy to…democracy – an erratic and self-interested figure unworthy of the public trust.’
Given the magnitude of the election, the editorial board said that the mere fact that Biden beat Trump in 2020 is ‘no longer a sufficient rationale for why [he] should be the Democratic nominee this year.’
In a moment of somber candor, the paper conceded that voters ‘cannot be expected to ignore what was…plain to see: Mr. Biden is not the man he was four years ago.’
The editors further opined that Biden’s candidacy is a ‘reckless gamble.’
The New York Times has demanded president Joe Biden to drop out of the race for The White House
‘There are Democratic leaders better equipped to present clear, compelling and energetic alternatives to a second Trump presidency.’
Following the debate, Trump seemed to be in high spirits and boasted of his ‘big victory.’
On Friday, he spoke in front of a crowd of supporters at a rally in Virginia, where he said: ‘Did anyone last night watch a thing called the debate? Man, that was a big one.’
The former president was quick to pour scorn on Biden’s performance, making a droll comment about the amount of preparation the president did before the debate:
‘Biden spent the entire week at Camp David resting, working, studying—he studied so hard he didn’t know what the hell he was doing.’
Trump, who spoke after Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, pointed out that Biden had set the terms for the debate.
‘He got the debate rules he wanted, he got the date he wanted, at the network he wanted with the [moderators] he wanted.
‘No amount of rest or rigging could defend his atrocious record’.
Trump added that the question is not if Biden can survive a 90-minute debate, but whether the country can survive another four years of him in the White House.
Some of Biden’s staunchest allies, meanwhile, attempted to do damage control and dismiss Biden’s egregious night as just a bad performance.
On Friday night, former President Barack Obama, rushed to Biden’s aid on X.com, where he wrote:
‘Bad debate nights happen…but this is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself.’
Obama quickly moved on from remarks about the debate itself, instead focusing his post on the temperamental difference between Biden and Trump.
He wrote that the choice was ‘between someone who tells the truth; who knows right from wrong and will give it to the American people straight- and someone who lies through his teeth for his own benefit.’
Obama concluded by saying: ‘last night didn’t change that, and it’s why so much is at stake in November.’
Biden himself also attempted to manage the fallout from his dismal debate performance at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Friday.
‘I know I’m not a young man. To state the obvious,’ the president said, standing alongside First Lady Jill Biden, who wore a Christian Siriano dress covered with word ‘vote.’