By: Nathaniel Ballantyne
Washington, DC – House Democrats are openly urging the president to avoid a second televised debate. Biden and Trump have another debate scheduled for September hosted by ABC News.
“If it’s the same debate questions, and it’s the same process, I probably wouldn’t do it. I’m not his advisor, but I probably wouldn’t advise him to do it,” said Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio).
Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.) went further: “We didn’t even need this debate. Quite frankly, we know exactly who Trump is. And we know exactly who Joe Biden is. You have a debate so that you can learn about a candidate. There’s nothing else to know.”
Rep. Troy Carter (D-La.) said that “if there’s going to be a second debate, the terms and the rules of engagement have to be changed.” Biden’s team has indicated that it has no plans to change this fall’s scheduled debate with Trump.
While House Democrats are advising Biden to stay away from additional debates,former President Barack Obama offered public support for Biden after the rough debate performance.
“Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know,” Obama said in a post on X, a reference to his own first debate with 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney, which was widely viewed as a victory for the Republican.
“Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know,” Obama said.
The former president pointed to bigger contrasts between Biden and Trump, echoing a strategy other Democrats have made since Thursday’s debate.
What the former president ignored is that Biden bad performance is due to mental issue not lack of preparation. To compare his debate failure with Mitt Romney with Biden performance is simply intellectual dishonesty. Biden seems to have dementia, and the people needs to know about his mental condition. Simply call it a bad debate night is not enough when Biden spent the last three years displaying signs of mental decline.
House Speaker Mike Johnson went further by saying that Biden’s Cabinet should discuss invoking the 25th Amendment in the wake of Thursday’s debate. Johnson, asked about calls from within his own conference for the amendment to be invoked, said that “there’s a lot of people asking about” it, but that it was up to members of Biden’s Cabinet – Not a chance!
