Photo: Evan Vucci Associated Press Joe Biden Tuesday in Washington.
Camille Camdessus – Agence France-Presse and Aurélia End – Agence France-Presse in Washington
Published at 12:02 a.m.
- United States
Democratic heavyweights and parliamentarians began to publicly question Joe Biden's fitness on Tuesday, while the White House and the president himself tried without much success to contain the 'fire.
“I have hope that he will make the difficult and painful decision to step down. I respectfully call on him to do so,” wrote Texan Lloyd Doggett midday. This Democratic parliamentarian is the first to publicly demand that the president throw in the towel.
Faced with the anxiety flaring in her party, Vice-President Kamala Harris said Tuesday she was “proud” to be the president’s “running mate”. “Joe Biden is our candidate, we beat Donald Trump once and we will beat him again,” she told CBS News.
An optimism that is rare in the Democratic camp, very shaken by the disastrous debate last Thursday, during which the 81-year-old Democrat lost his footing against his Republican rival Donald Trump.
< p> “I think it is legitimate to ask whether this is a simple episode or a lasting state,” said the very influential Nancy Pelosi, former Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives. , on Joe Biden's favorite channel, MSNBC.
“The truth, I think, is that Biden is going to lose to Trump. I know it’s difficult, but I think the debate has done too much damage,” said Washington State Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez.
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On Wednesday, Joe Biden is scheduled to speak with the country's Democratic governors, according to the official White House agenda. “We will have a healthy discussion with the president,” one of them, J. B. Pritzker of Illinois, said Tuesday evening on CNN.
“Right now, Joe Biden is our candidate, I'm 100 percent behind him, unless he makes a different decision, and then we'll all discuss the best course of action,” the governor added.
“Bounce Back”
Joe Biden offered a new explanation for the disastrous 90 minutes at a meeting with Democratic donors near Washington.
He said it was “not very smart” to have “traveled around the world several times” shortly before the showdown, and that it had led him to “almost fall asleep on stage,” adding: “That's not an excuse, it's a explanation”.
The American president visited France from June 5 to 9, then to Italy from June 12 to 14, followed by a campaign trip to California. He subsequently took six days to prepare for the June 27 debate at the Camp David residence, a period during which he had no public activity.
Until now, the argument of his supporters was to say that Joe Biden had had a “bad evening”, therefore temporary, and to emphasize that he was suffering from a “cold” hampering his speech, which was repeated again on Tuesday by her spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre.
The president “knows how to bounce back,” she assured, ruling out the possibility that the democratic leader , judged fit to govern by his doctor in February, takes a cognitive test.
The American president will give an interview to ABC News on Friday and the White House promises a solo press conference next week, two meetings supposed to prove that Joe Biden can express himself fluently without a teleprompter.
Poll
According to a poll published Tuesday by CNN, 75% of voters surveyed believe that the Party Democrat would have better chances in November with a candidate other than him.
Donald Trump is credited with 49% of voting intentions at the national level, compared to 43% for his rival , an unchanged gap compared to the last poll of this type, conducted in April.
Vice-President Kamala Harris, without winning, would be better placed, at 45 % versus 47% for the 78-year-old former Republican president.
The New York Times reported Tuesday that people close to the president noted “more frequent” and “more frequent” absences. more pronounced” in recent months.
Questions about the mental acuity of the oldest president in the history of the United States are “legitimate,” insisted Karine Jean-Pierre on Tuesday, failing to answer them head-on.
The spokesperson assured that the American executive was “absolutely not” hiding information on the president’s fitness.