Well, he didn’t fall asleep or pitch over during the interview with George Stephanopoulos, so in that sense, this is an improvement for Joe Biden. On the other hand, Biden continued having trouble finishing thoughts, dreamed up a non-existent primary challenge from Mark Warner, and claimed he’d “shut Putin down” while Ukraine approaches its 30th month of a Russian invasion.
Now the big question is: will the “Lord Almighty come down and say ‘Joe, get out of the race'”?
I must admit that I didn’t watch this live, but I did watch some of the clips released by ABC News and clipped by RNC Research. Biden seemed at least more engaged than he did on Thursday night, but to call that a low bar is to engage in almost in absurdist understatement. In the clips I did see, Biden sounded tired, had trouble with responses, and made a number of clearly false statements. The weirdest may have been Biden attempting to justify remaining in the race because of the size of the crowds attending his events.
Has he ever seen a Trump rally?
Anyway. I’ll watch this in full later, but I’m not the target audience. It’s safe to say he didn’t exactly woo the people he really needed to convince with this interview.
The president is rightfully proud of his record.
But he is dangerously out-of-touch with the concerns people have about his capacitiies moving forward and his standing in this race.
Four years ago at this time, he was 10 points ahead of Trump.
Today, he is six points behind.— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) July 6, 2024
That was the worst possible outcome: not anywhere near good enough to settle matters, but also not quite bad enough to be a slam-dunk that he has to go tomorrow.
— Michael Tomasky (@mtomasky) July 6, 2024
My prediction: Warner will follow through with his plan to rally Senate Democrats to push Biden to withdraw, maybe even by Monday if the Sunday talking heads get really brutal. But I’d also bet Biden won’t do it. He’ll claim he emphatically righted the ship in this interview, and Jill Biden will keep feeding him that line as often as it takes.
Addendum: I’ll toss in a few of the observations I made on Twitter:
The last exchange is revealing. After Biden blames his bad performance on Trump lying, Stephanopoulos points out he looked bad before Trump even spoke. Biden seems surprised by that and then just says, “I had a bad night, man.” https://t.co/pddLj3vwVG
— Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) July 5, 2024
He publicly suggested we wouldn’t react to a limited incursion into Ukraine right before Putin invaded. How did that shut Putin down? https://t.co/b0BZngZvkg
— Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) July 6, 2024
He works Dr Pepper hours M-Th and then spends three days at the beach while getting paid $400K per year. I’d be happy to swap with him. https://t.co/zdIgRtdoEq
— Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) July 6, 2024
