Chuck Schumer Pushed Joe Biden to Drop Out Fearing He Could Join US History’s ‘Darkest Figures’

Late. Chuck Schumer, during a private meeting on a lakefront porch in mid-July, urged Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 race, telling the president that as few as five Democratic senators privately supported his re-election campaign and that a loss for Donald Trump could make him “one of the darkest figures” in American political history.

Citing sources familiar with the one-on-one conversation at Biden’s Rehoboth Beach lake home, New York Times correspondents and authors Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater wrote about the fraught exchange in their book Mad House: How Donald Trump, MAGA Mean Girls, a Former Used Car Salesman, a Florida Nepo Baby and a Man with Rats in the Walls Broke Congress.

In an article adapted from the book and published by the Timesthe couple explains that Schumer drove four hours to Biden’s home with a plan. At the time, Biden pollsters predicted he had a 5% chance of winning the 2024 election.

“If you run and you lose to Trump and we lose the Senate and we don’t get the House back, 50 years of great, beautiful work goes out the window,” he told Biden. “But worse – you will go down in American history as one of the darkest figures.”

“If I were you,” he continued. “I didn’t want to run and I encourage you not to run.”

At the time, Biden was under enormous pressure, largely due to negative headlines about his perceived mental acuity. ONE CBS News/YouGov poll published after Biden’s debate against Trump indicated that 72% of respondents believed that Biden did not have the mental and cognitive health to be president.

Biden wasn’t the only candidate who didn’t fare well after his performance — 49% of registered voters also thought Donald Trump didn’t have the mental and cognitive health to be president.

Renewed conversations about Biden’s mental acuity have emerged during his final days in office. In an interview with Bari Weiss’ The free press released Friday, Speaker Mike Johnson said he met with Biden in the third week of January 2024 to talk about an aid package for Ukraine. Johnson had another goal for the meeting: a recently signed executive order to pause the approval of new permits to export US liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Johnson told Weiss that he asked Biden why he issued the executive order, and Biden denied having done so. “Sir, you paused it, I know. I have the export terminals in my state. I talked to the people in my state, I talked to the people this morning, this is doing massive damage to our economy, the national security,” Johnson told Biden.

But he said he also realized Biden was telling the truth. “He really didn’t know what he was signing up for,” Johnson told Weiss. “And I walked out of that meeting in fear and disgust because I thought, ‘We’re in serious trouble — who’s running the country?’ I don’t know who put the paper in front of him, but he didn’t know.”

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