US Elections: Joe Biden and his entourage urged to be “honest” about the state of the American president

Doubts about the outgoing president’s candidacy persist. After Joe Biden’s disastrous debate with Donald Trump, the Democratic camp is urging the American president to be “honest” about his fitness, and questions are mounting about the responsibility of his inner circle.

“We have to be honest with ourselves that this was not just a horrible night,” House Representative Mike Quigley, a Democrat from northern Illinois, told CNN on Tuesday.

Since then, the American president has not given a live interview or press conference, which would require him, as during the 90 minutes facing his Republican rival on CNN, to speak without a safety net and without a teleprompter. On Monday, at the end of a very short speech about a Supreme Court decision, a journalist asked him if he planned to withdraw from the race for the White House. The American president turned on his heel and left the room without answering.

“Cowards”

Questions are flying about the responsibility of the 81-year-old Democrat’s inner circle, namely a few longtime advisers such as Ron Klain, Anita Dunn or Mike Donilon, and his wife Jill Biden. The sometimes almost arrogant attitude of the Biden camp, which evokes a “coward brigade” in response to calls to withdraw his candidacy, gets on Democrats’ nerves.

Polls are struggling to separate the president from his Republican predecessor. By calling for a debate in June, Joe Biden hoped to finally gain momentum against Donald Trump. “I blame the campaign team for brushing aside the questions people are asking,” said Senator Peter Welch. In an interview with the Semafor website, published Tuesday, this Democrat from Vermont (northeast) called for “facing reality.”

Recent articles, particularly from Axios and Politico, have suggested that the president would only be fully functional between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., and would only read notes written to avoid any annoyance.

Since his election, the oldest president in US history has undeniably lost his oral and physical ease. Until now, the White House has consistently dismissed all questions about Joe Biden’s intellectual acuity, sometimes with marked irritation.

” Decline “

A recent Wall Street Journal investigation into the octogenarian’s “decline” earned the paper a wave of particularly harsh criticism from its communications team.

For several months now, the American president, who has fallen in public on several occasions, has not used the large gangway of his plane, preferring a shorter and more stable staircase. For several weeks, he has also surrounded himself with advisers to go from the White House to his helicopter on the lawn, which avoids long camera shots of his very stiff gait.

The US president, who has always been prone to gaffes, has not given a long press conference since January 2022 and has reduced the number of impromptu exchanges with journalists.

When Joe Biden recently visited France for the commemorations of the Allied landings of 1944, he went straight from the airport to his hotel, where he remained locked up for a whole day, without any public appearance.