(The Lion) — Former President Joe Biden’s aides reportedly convinced him to face off in an early debate against then-candidate Donald Trump to show his “strength” and Trump’s “weakness,” a leaked memo indicates, in what turned out to be anything but.
The CNN June 2024 debate between Trump and Biden is widely credited with reshaping the presidential race, igniting a media firestorm after Biden stuttered, lost his train of thought, and at times was incoherent. Dubbed a “disastrous” performance by both sides of the political aisle, the debate turned out to be fateful for Biden’s re-election prospects as a slew of Democratic lawmakers urged Biden to drop out of the race.
Biden’s aides urged him to schedule an early debate rather than waiting for the September and October dates proposed by the Commission on Presidential Debates, according to an April 2024 memo first published by Politico Playbook. The memo was obtained by journalists Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf for a book released Tuesday titled 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America, Politico noted.
If Biden had waited to debate later in the fall, early voting would have begun in some battleground states, but instead, in April, the senior advisers encouraged Biden to debate much earlier.
“By holding the first debate in the spring, YOU will be able to reach the widest audience possible, before we are deep in the summer months with the conventions, Olympics and family vacations taking precedence,” Biden’s senior advisors wrote in the leaked memo, dated April 15, 2024. “In addition, the earlier YOU are able to debate the better, so that the American people can see YOU standing next to Trump and showing the strength of YOUR leadership, compared to Trump’s weakness and chaos.”
Every direct reference to Biden throughout the memo was written “in attention-grabbing all caps and bold,” Politico reported. The book also noted that not all of Biden’s advisors were on board with the early debate, with some of them hesitant about him facing off Trump at all. One Biden donor was reportedly “alarmed” by Biden’s appearance at a Chicago fundraiser and urged the White House to “find an excuse” to avoid debating Trump.
The debate, seen by more than 50 million Americans, raised serious questions about Biden’s mental fitness for office.
“The only highlight from the debate was Joe Biden’s inability (to) form a complete sentence,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told Fox News Digital. “American voters got a firsthand look at Biden’s weakness, his campaign in chaos, and what it looks like when a real leader is missing from the White House.
“Unfortunately for the Democrats, no adviser or so-called ‘strategic’ move could save their incompetent candidates and terrible policies from President Trump’s historic, landslide victory.”
