Biden’s exit from the 2024 race ‘wouldn’t be a total shock’: Franklin Foer
“It wouldn’t be a total shock” if President Biden were eliminated from the 2024 presidential campaign, according to a Biden biographer, who has had “unprecedented access” to the president’s “close inner circle” for his new book.
Franklin Foer, the well-connected author of The Last Politican, said Sunday he wouldn’t rule out the 80-year-old commander-in-chief stepping down from a second term because of the president’s strong belief in fate.
“I would say that it would be a surprise for me. But it wouldn’t be a complete surprise. … It wouldn’t be a total shock,” Foer told Meet the Press host Chuck Todd when asked about the prospects of Biden retiring from the race by the end of the year.
“When he talks about his life, he uses that word, destiny, all the time,” Foer explained.
“Joe Biden is a very religious guy, and destiny is a word full of religious meaning. And he always talks about it, he can’t tell where fate is going. And when I hear that, it always comes to me as the ellipsis in the sentence when he talks about his own future.”
Biden, the oldest president in US history, would be 86 at the end of his second term if re-elected.
Privately during his first two years as president, Biden “occasionally admitted to feeling tired,” according to an excerpt from Foer’s book, which also notes that the “public personality of the commander-in-chief reflected the physical deterioration and reflected the dulling of mental faculties over time”. No pill or exercise program can resist that.
“It doesn’t take Bob Woodward to understand that Joe Biden is old,” Foer told Todd, referring to the Washington Post reporter who exposed the Watergate scandal.
“I’m not a gerontologist and I can’t predict how Joe Biden will age over the next few years,” Foer said.
Biden formally announced his bid for re-election in April, urging voters to give him another four years as president to help him “finish the job,” despite growing concerns about his advanced age.
According to a Wall Street Journal poll released Monday, two-thirds of Democrats and 73% of registered voters believe Biden is too old for re-election, and just 36% of 1,500 respondents believe the president is mentally fit for the office.
Biden has publicly admitted that questions about his age are a “legitimate concern” of voters.
But privately, the oldest commander-in-chief of all time has “blown airs to his allies” about how much the issue is being discussed in the media. according to Politico.
“You think I don’t know how f***ing old I am?” According to the outlet, a disgruntled Biden ranted to one of his acquaintances last year.
