Bitter Biden family members — racked by betrayal over fellow Democrats calling on the 81-year-old president to drop out — are reportedly in talks about how and when he should step down from the 2024 White House race.
The powerful political clan is weighing the matter and taking into account the 81-year-old president’s health as well as the national interest, sources told NBC News.
Privately, the family — including first lady Jill Biden, first son Hunter and sister Valerie Owens — feels disrespected by people they had considered friends in the Democratic establishment.
“There was a much more dignified way to do this if this is what they wanted,” one Biden insider told the outlet. “This is no way to treat a public servant who has done a lot for this country.”
Publicly, neither the White House nor the president’s campaign has given an indication that the re-election effort could be abandoned.
“That is not happening, period,” White House senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement. “The individuals making those claims are not speaking for his family or his team — and they will be proven wrong. Keep the faith.”
Still, Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon admitted in a Friday interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that there had been “slippage” lately and the president needed to regain his footing — but was “absolutely” running despite the tough few weeks.
“I think it’s inevitable,” another person close to the re-election campaign told NBC.
Even Biden acknowledged in a BET interview released this week that he would consider leaving the race, “if I had some medical condition that emerged, if somebody, if doctors came to me and said, you got this problem and that problem.”
On Wednesday, he tested positive for COVID-19 and was experiencing what his personal physician described as “general malaise” before he cancelled an appearance at a Las Vegas campaign event and retreated with his family to Delaware.
Calls in Congress have grown louder every day for the oldest-ever president to step aside since his disastrous debate against Trump on June 27, which was followed by faltering media interviews anda bungled high-profile press conference during the NATO summit in Washington, DC, last week.
As of Friday morning, Montana Sen. Jon Tester and New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich became the second Democrats in the upper chamber to publicly call on Biden to suspend his run — along with 24 House Democrats.
Former President Barack Obama has also reportedly been pressuring his old running-mate to reconsider, along with House Speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).
Though none have publicly stated their lack of confidence in their party’s leader, all have apparently discussed bad polling numbers — with Schumer personally visiting Biden last week at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Del.
An AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll this week found 65% of Democrats — and 70% of Americans — want Biden to drop out.
Other polls have shown, however, that should he decide to do so, no clear Democratic successor has significantly better chances of defeating Trump — including Vice President Kamala Harris.
Deep-pocketed Democratic donors are also stoking fears about a landslide loss for their candidates up and down the ballot on Election Day 2024, with Brian Wolff, the treasurer of the House Majority PAC issuing a warning that everything was “on the brink.”
“They can’t afford to alienate the base that wants to support Biden,” Wolff told NBC, “or the base that wants someone else.”
