Morning Joe on MSNBC was in meltdown Friday with a host of guests declaring President Joe Biden should step down from the race, and a clearly emotional Mika Brzezinski—who said she had known the president for 50 years—struggling to accept what had transpired on the debate stage
Joe Scarborough himself hinted that it might be time for Democrats to tell Biden it was “over” after a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump.
Invoking the spirit of Barry Goldwater, the Republican who played a pivotal role in persuading Richard Nixon to resign after Watergate, Scarborough said: “Where is the Barry Goldwater? To walk over and tell Richard Nixon it was over… now the question is, do Democrats need to do the same thing of Joe Biden?”
Scarborough said: “We have to ask the same questions of (Biden) that we have asked of Donald Trump since 2016 and that is, if he were CEO and he turned in a performance like that, would any corporation in America, any Fortune 500 Corporation in America, keep him on as CEO?”
He said the question was not one of “love” and “respect” for Biden but a question of whether he can win the presidency because “failure is not an option.”
Scarborough continued: “Donald Trump lied over and over and over and over again, and Joe Biden couldn’t respond to any of those lies. In fact, as the New York Times said, he spent much of the night with his mouth agape… he missed one layup after another after another.
“He couldn’t respond effectively to Donald Trump trying to overthrow American democracy on Jan. 6, he couldn’t respond effectively to Donald Trump’s continued stream of lies about his own record, and he couldn’t even respond effectively on the issue of abortion, where, for some reason, he darted wildly to the issue of immigration.”
Scarborough said of Biden, “Tragically he did not rise to the occasion last night.”
Willie Geist joined the conversation, saying: “Regular people, people who don’t watch cable news every day, people who are not on Twitter, people who don’t absorb politics the way we do, they watched last night and said, ‘My God, I don’t think he’s up to this.’
“Their worst fears were confirmed.”
Geist mentioned other potential candidates and said, “I heard Kamala Harris’ name a lot last night. I heard Gavin Newsom’s name a lot last night, I heard Governor Josh Shapiro’s name last night.”
He said the message from “party insiders” and “regular people” alike is that, “Joe Biden now cannot beat Donald Trump.”
Brzezinski looked shell-shocked but she said it was too soon to oust the president. “Biden had a terrible night. He could not land a thought, not even in the closing statement, which is something that’s the easiest part. Write down a few words. Go through, go through the thoughts (but) I’m not ready to give up on Joe Biden, not even close,” she said.
She did conceded, however: “It was terrible. It was terrible. There’s no way to spin it.”
Scarborough responded: “If this debate does not lead to serious discussions between Democrats and the president, then what you end up having is sort of this frozen political situation.”
He said the situation was not a case of “democratic bedwetting” but “a war… a political battle for democracy.”
He said the debate was akin to “losing a major battle” and said it was reasonable for people in such circumstances to ask, “if this general is up to leading the troops the rest of the way.”
Scarborough said: “This is nothing personal. If we believe in what we believe, I would do this to my mother. I would do this to my mother if I believed she was standing in the way of our goals.”
He added: “I’m not saying that everything happens today and maybe we wait a week. I’m just saying personal feelings—admiration, love, respect, honor, all the things I talked about in my feelings about Joe Biden, Jill Biden and their family, that Mika and her family have felt about Joe Biden for 50 years—cannot play a role in any of this.
“This is a battle for the future of American democracy… this is the last chance for Democrats to decide whether this man we’ve known and loved for a very long time is up to the task of running for president the United States.”
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