Biden’s Team Is “Freaking the F*** Out” Over Debate Performance

President Joe Biden’s performance at last week’s debate has induced a maelstrom among aides and officials in the White House and on his campaign, with several administration figures reportedly “freaking the fuck out,” according to Axios.

“It’s the first topic of every conversation,” one White House official told the publication. “Senior leadership has given us nothing. To act like it’s business as usual is delusional.”

The debate was a critical moment for not just Biden’s 2024 candidacy but also his current presidency. Over 90 minutes, what was intended to be a showcase of Donald Trump’s extremism in contrast to Biden devolved into a one-sided train wreck, with Biden unable to string more than a few words together before getting steamrolled by an assertive and comparatively alive Trump.

In the aftermath, aides told Axios that they felt that they were handed empty talking points, with no confident explanations for why Biden appeared so weak and unwell during the debate. As the days drag on, that confusion has morphed into anger and resentment among a swathe of Biden’s employees, with one official involved in the campaign describing the atmosphere as “dark.”

“It feels like there is zero leadership or information,” the anonymous staffer told Axios. “People are being told to keep their heads down and keep working, but they’re not seeing the president or being given any reason why they should have faith in him.”

That feeling was shared in the White House, with one unnamed official telling Axios that “people are looking for leadership and direction that they were told to trust, and hoped was there, but aren’t yet feeling, in what is now clearly a defining moment for this presidency.”

Executive branch employees aren’t the only ones losing sight of the light in the Biden administration. On Tuesday alone, several prominent Democrats, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have signaled it may be time for Biden to remove himself from the race. Representative Jim Clyburn, whose 2020 endorsement helped Biden secure his last nomination, announced his support for Vice President Kamala Harris to take the reins “if [Biden] were to step aside,” and Texas Representative Lloyd Doggett became the first House member to formally call on Biden to withdraw from the race.

A new leaked poll shows support for President Joe Biden plummeting in key battleground states around the country in the wake of his disastrous debate performance on Thursday.

Puck News gained access to an internal Democratic polling memo conducted 72 hours after the debate, and it’s bad: Several states that were considered solidly blue are now competitive for Donald Trump, including Colorado, New Hampshire, Virginia, and New Mexico. Plus, other Democrats, such as Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, are polling better than Biden in head-to-head matchups with the convicted felon and former president.

The polling came from OpenLabs, a nonprofit specializing in polling for Democratic organizations, and found that 40 percent of 2020 Biden voters now think the president should step aside, an increase from about 25 percent in May. Swing voters believe Biden should drop out by a 2-to-1 margin.

Democrats and Trump opponents may take solace in the fact that Biden only dropped in national head-to-head polling with Trump by 0.08 points. However, in battleground states, Biden is performing much worse. For example, Biden trails Trump by seven points in Pennsylvania, compared to five points before the debate. He also is behind Trump in Michigan (seven points), Georgia (10 points), and Nevada (nine points).

While this is only one poll, conducted immediately after the debate, it reportedly has been circulating in Democratic circles, and may be a factor behind the worries being openly expressed by top Democrats. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that Biden’s mental condition was a “legitimate concern” on Tuesday, and one of the longest serving Democrats in the House, Representative Lloyd Doggett, has even called for Biden to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race.

Can the Biden campaign right the ship and restore calm? ProPublica released an unedited September interview with the president that shows him alert and mentally fit, and Biden also appeared to be lucid and sharp in a North Carolina rally on Friday. He will need more positive counterexamples like those two, as well as a better performance at September’s presidential debate in order to assuage concerns not just from top Democrats, but also voters across the political spectrum.  

A new report by The New York Times paints a damning picture of Joe Biden’s mental and physical state in the weeks leading up to last week’s debate.

Times reporters who spoke with insiders close to the administration and the campaign revealed that Biden has appeared “confused or listless, or would lose the thread of conversations” over the past few months, even as he’s been “sharp and engaged most of the time.”

Republicans have ramped up attacks on Biden’s age and fitness with edited videos of Biden appearing to freeze, disoriented, at several public events, including a D-Day commemoration at Normandy, a Juneteenth celebration, and diplomatic meetings across Europe. The Biden campaign dismissed these videos as “cheap fakes.” But it’s now clear that Biden’s condition, punctuated by his poor debate performance, alarmed many before he took the stage.

According to the Times, Biden’s European trips were a mixed bag of “moments of sharpness … including a complex session on diverting income from Russian assets to aid Ukraine’’ and “occasional blank-stared confusion.” But European officials were reportedly “shocked” by a “noticeable decline in Mr. Biden’s physical state since the previous fall” and observed that he appeared “out of it.” European leaders at the G7 summit are reported to have held private conversations about Biden’s condition, and one former official is said to have expressed doubt about Biden’s ability to handle an adversary like Vladimir Putin.

But the most shocking revelation in the report concerns Biden’s debate preparation. According to the Times, prep meetings began no earlier than 11 a.m., and included time for a daily nap. Biden surrogates have blamed his performance on bad strategy, calling him “over-coached” and “over-practiced.”

As the campaign digs its heels in against those questioning the president’s fitness, any evidence that the debate was not an outlier but an alarmingly common occurrence will feed the increasingly strident calls for Biden to withdraw from the race.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a strange reaction to a phenomenally dark set of accusations that emerged Tuesday, seemingly lending credibility to a sexual assault allegation against him by a former employee, while attempting to shoo off the idea that he had chowed down on a dead dog in 2010.

During an interview on Breaking Points, host Saagar Enjeti asked the independent presidential candidate about a photograph of Kennedy posing with what appeared to be a barbecued dog.

“The article is a lot of garbage,” Kennedy said, referring to a Vanity Fair exposé, which published the image. The photo caption mentioned Kennedy recently texted the image to a friend with a message that he should try dog on a visit to Korea. “The picture that they said is of me eating a dog is actually me eating a goat in Patagonia on a white water trip many years ago.

“They say they have an expert that has identified that as a dog carcass. It’s just not true.”

Vanity Fair said a veterinarian examined the photograph and identified the carcass as a dog’s due to its 13 pairs of ribs, including a telltale pair of “floating ribs” that dogs have. Goats also have 13 pairs of ribs, with two pairs of floating ribs.

But that wasn’t the only strange allegation Enjeti pushed Kennedy on. The host also wanted answers to circulating rumors about the politician allegedly sexually assaulting a former family babysitter in 1998, when Kennedy was 45 and the babysitter was 23.

“In terms of the other allegations, listen, I have said this from the beginning: I am not a church boy. I am not running like that,” Kennedy continued. “I had a very, very rambunctious youth. I said in my announcement speech that I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote I could run for king of the world.

“So, Vanity Fair is recycling 30-year-old stories, and I’m not going to comment on the details of any of them,” Kennedy said, refusing an opportunity to elaborate further on the allegations.

The former babysitter, Eliza Cooney, accused Kennedy of rubbing her leg, reading her diary, asking her to rub lotion on his back, and trapping her in the pantry and groping her, all on separate occasions. Some of Kennedy’s friends also told Vanity Fair that he had sent them photographs of nude women multiple times. The friends believed Kennedy had taken the pictures himself but did not know if the women had consented to being photographed or of the images being shared.

Representative Jim Clyburn, whose 2020 primary endorsement paved the way for Joe Biden to lock up the Democratic nomination for president, says he would support Vice President Kamala Harris if Biden were to step aside in November’s election.

Clyburn, a 2024 Biden-Harris campaign co-chair, expressed his support for Harris on MSNBC Tuesday, defending her role in the White House and the Democratic Party.

“I will support her if he were to step aside,” Clyburn told Andrea Mitchell. “I want this ticket to continue to be Biden-Harris, and then we’ll see what happens after the next election.… No. This party should not, in any way, do anything to work around Ms. Harris. We should do everything we can to bolster her whether she’s in second place or at the top of the ticket.”

Is Clyburn alluding to the possibility of Biden being replaced? Whether he is or isn’t, the South Carolina Democrat stressed that Harris should not be bypassed or replaced with anyone else, which could determine what happens with Biden’s status on the Democratic ticket. Clyburn was very much the Democratic kingmaker in 2020, as his endorsement led to Biden winning South Carolina. His endorsement would be critical to any would-be Democratic replacement in the next few months.

Clyburn’s cryptic statement joins less vague rhetoric from other prominent Democrats who worry about whether Biden will have enough support to defeat Donald Trump. Notably, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi echoed those fears on Tuesday, and Representative Lloyd Doggett, a 15-term congressman, even called for Biden to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race.

Meanwhile, Biden plans to speak with Democratic governors from across the country in a private phone call to try and allay their concerns, likely on Wednesday, which would be two days after governors discussed Biden in a phone call among themselves. Right now, the mood within the Democratic Party is tense and anxious, with even former President Barack Obama being unable to calm the party faithful.