Michael Steele: Democrats should give Biden presidency ‘Last Rites’ and ‘move the hell on’
By Tara Suter - 7/18/24, 3:02 PM EDT
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MSNBC political analyst Michael Steele said Thursday that “Democrats need to administer Last Rites" to the Biden presidency as talk continues about President Biden's fitness and ability to beat former President Trump in November.
“At this point Democrats need to administer Last Rites to the Biden Presidency and move the hell on,” Steele, a former Republican National Committee chair who endorsed Biden in 2020, said in a post on the social platform X.
“I’ve never seen a bunch politically bumbling incompetents torch their nominee and themselves so royally and still think they’re going to be competitive when they have not evinced even a wee bit of a strategy to indicate they know how the hell to move forward once their coup is over,” Steele added in his post.
Steele’s post came in response to an article from The Hill about MSNBC host Joe Scarborough saying on his show Thursday that Democrats are showing frustration toward those surrounding Biden who he said "are keeping him in a bubble” amid expanding calls for him to exit the 2024 presidential race.
“You know, it’s really incumbent on people that are around Joe Biden to step up at this point and help the president. Help the man they love, and do the right thing. This is not going to end well if it continues to drag out. Look at the events of yesterday,” Scarborough said on “Morning Joe,” a day after the president tested positive for COVID-19.
Biden has been facing political headwinds in the wake of a rough presidential debate performance last month that raised concerns about his age, mental fitness and ability to recapture the White House in the fall. Growing calls have emerged among Democrats in the House and the Senate for him to exit the race in the wake of the shaky debate performance.
An Emerson College poll published Thursday found the president trailing Trump nationally and in seven battleground states.
Biden has been insistent that he will stay in the race, indicating in a Wednesday interview that he would only reconsider the decision to do so if he heard from a doctor that he had a medical condition.