NYT columnist, Biden’s close friend, says president’s debate performance made him ‘weep,’ urges him to ‘bow out’
New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, who is a close friend of Joe Biden, said the president’s performance in the presidential debate made him “weep.” He also urged Biden not to seek re-election, thus putting the nation’s interest first.
Friedman wrote an op-ed titled ‘President Biden Is My Friend. He Must Bow Out of the Race,’ where he wrote that he “cannot remember a more heartbreaking moment in American presidential campaign politics in my lifetime.”
‘No business running for re-election’
“I watched the Biden-Trump debate alone … and it made me weep,” Friedman wrote. “Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election.” He further said that Biden’s “family and political team must gather quickly and have the hardest of conversations with the president.”
In the first presidential debate this year, in which Biden and Donald Trump came face to face, the president’s performance has been dubbed disastrous. It has greatly alarmed the Democratic Party just a few months before the general election. During the debate, Biden was seen stumbling, staring blankly and freezing.
Biden and Friedman have been friends since they travelled to Afghanistan and Pakistan together after 9/11. At the time, Biden chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Friedman wrote in the op-ed that he is saying all this “with great sadness.”
Friedman said he believes Biden has integrity and has had many accomplishments, but a new leader is needed to handle the challenges of the 21st century. “If he caps his presidency now, by acknowledging that because of age he is not up to a second term, his first and only term will be remembered as among the better presidencies in our history,” Friedman said.
Biden’s supporters had hoped the debate would give him an opportunity to prove that he is fit for office, after his capabilities were questioned time and again following his gaffes and awkward moments on stage. However, after the debate, hopes were shattered.
“The Biden family and political team must gather quickly and have the hardest of conversations with the president, a conversation of love and clarity and resolve,” Friedman said.