The National Review editorial board reacted to President Biden's decision not seek re-election in November, demanding he leave office immediately.
The National Review editorial board called on President Biden to resign from office in a scathing editorial on Sunday after he announced he would not seek re-election in November.
"Biden should take the next logical step and resign the presidency," the editorial board wrote. "It’s possible to imagine a president not being able to campaign but still being capable of carrying out his official duties — say, if he had a serious physical impairment. And it is even possible to imagine a president who could serve for another six months but not another four and a half years. But such scenarios do not apply to Biden."
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The 81-year-old president has been under mounting pressure to drop out of the 2024 presidential race in the wake of his disastrous debate performance against former President Trump last month. His weak showing spurred concerns over whether he had the mental and physical stability to run a campaign and serve another four-year term.
Biden finally bowed to that pressure on Sunday, writing in a public letter, "It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term."
The group of senior editors at the National Review cheered Biden for doing "the right thing in ending the charade of asking the American public to believe that he was capable of serving another four years as president.
"This was preposterous, and the public, as the polling has consistently shown for a long time, didn’t believe it," they wrote.
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While Biden "has obviously been confused in public…we are getting disturbing reports of his not recognizing friends and Democratic lawmakers in private," they continue.
"Whatever the level of his decline at the moment, it is sure to get worse. The country deserves to have complete assurance that the president of the United States, whatever his party or ideology, is fully in possession of his faculties."
The editorial board goes on to point blame at Biden, his family, Democratic leadership and the media for deliberately concealing Biden's decline from the American public.
"Democrats wouldn’t be in this fix if Biden and his family had taken full accounting of his aging when they decided to run again last year and if the White House, Democratic leaders, the press, and various other insiders hadn’t undertaken an effort to cover up Biden’s state," the column reads. "They all knew what was going on but figured that if they didn’t talk about it, somehow people wouldn’t notice. Of course, they did.
"That cover-up was intended to deceive the American people, but its first victims were Democratic primary voters, who were denied a real choice or a real say in their party’s nominee. The serious potential candidates were sidelined by pressure to close ranks publicly behind Biden, who refused to debate the few, marginal primary opponents he attracted."
The editors called on the Democratic Party to apologize to former presidential candidate Rep. Dean Phillips, who repeatedly warned about Biden’s current state but was dismissed for "saying the quiet part out loud."
They continue, charging Democrats and the media who turned against Biden after his debate debacle of doing so, "not because they were conscience-stricken about previously lying about his condition, but because they got caught and feared losing.
"This shameful performance that literally put the country at risk should never be forgotten," the editors write.
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The editors say Biden, who endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee, would "make it easier for her to hit reset in the campaign" if he resigned from office immediately.
"In isolation, Democrats would be better served to look beyond Harris, ideally to a governor with a more moderate image. But Biden’s endorsement, the compressed timetable, and the difficulty of passing over an African-American woman will presumably make that very difficult, if not impossible," they wrote.
While Harris' political impact remains to be seen, "At least the centerpiece of the Democratic campaign will no longer be a flagrant falsehood that nearly everyone recognizes as such," the editorial board concludes.
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"Biden is no longer offering himself up as the next president of the United States until January 2029 and, if he really wants to put the country first as he said in his statement, should resign the presidency right now."
The no-holds-barred editorial comes as Republican lawmakers call on Biden to resign from office immediately following his announcement to withdraw from the race.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said in a statement, "If Joe Biden is not fit to run for President, he is not fit to serve as President. He must resign the office immediately. November 5 cannot arrive soon enough."
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Democratic lawmakers who have called on Biden to drop out have insisted they are confident he can finish the roughly five months left in his term.
Fox News' Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.
