Former Obama adviser David Axelrod called out President Biden for his post-debate interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos and accused him of "denial, delusion and defiance."
"Biden could be excused for wanting to put his awful debate performance in the rear view mirror. That was his purpose Friday in sitting down for the interview — to try and quell the panic that has gripped the Democratic Party," Axelrod wrote in a CNN op-ed. "He didn’t succeed."
President Biden told Stephanopoulos on Friday that he was the best person to beat Donald Trump in November and that he would only drop out if the "Lord Almighty" came down and told him to.
The political operative wrote, "Denial. Delusion. Defiance." The headline to the piece read, "Biden’s defiant delusion."
"The stakes are as great as Biden describes. And if he believes it, as I think he does, he will eventually do what duty and love of country requires, and step aside," Axelrod said.
BIDEN PANNED FOR NOT BEING CERTAIN ABOUT WHETHER HE WATCHED THE DEBATE: ‘HE DOESN’T KNOW???'
"If he does not, it will be Biden’s age, and not Trump’s moral and ethical void, that will dominate the rest of this most important campaign and sully the president’s historic legacy," Axelrod wrote.
Axelrod took aim at different moments during the ABC interview, including his answer to a question about whether he watched the debate afterward.
"I don't think I did, no," Biden told Stephanopoulos.
"When Stephanopoulos asked the president if he would take an independent medical evaluation, complete with neurological and cognitive exams and release the results, Biden demurred and deflected," Axelrod wrote, taking aim at his responses to the ABC News hosts' questions about a cognitive exam.
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He said Biden was headed for a "landslide defeat to a lawless and unpopular former president."
ABC's Jon Karl had similar concerns and said Friday that the interview did little to calm the nerves of Democrats.
"Look, Biden looked better and certainly more coherent than he looked during the debate, but there's nothing in this interview that is calming nerves of jittery Democrats who fear that Joe Biden is on a trajectory to lose this race, to lose to Donald Trump," Karl told Stephanopoulos after the interview.
"In fact, for some of those people, the interview is raising new concerns, particularly the fact that he is unwilling or unaware of the fact that he is in a dire situation here regarding the campaign, that he is losing, in the view of many Democrats and frankly in the polls you cited, that he is losing to Donald Trump," he said.
The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
