Sen. Chuck Schumer urged Joe Biden during a private meeting on a lakeside porch in mid-July 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 to 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 lake home at Rehoboth Beach, 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 His Walls Broke Congress.
In an article adapted from the book and published by the Times, the pair explain 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 back the House, that 50 years of amazing, beautiful work goes out the window,” he told Biden. “But worse — you go down in American history as one of the darkest figures.”
“If I were you,” he continued. “I wouldn’t run, and I’m urging you not to run.”
At the time, Biden was under tremendous pressure due in large part to negative headlines about his perceived mental acuity. A CBS News/YouGov poll published after Biden’s debate against Trump indicated 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 following his performance — 49% of registered voters also believed Donald Trump didn’t have the mental and cognitive health to be president.
Renewed conversations about Biden’s mental sharpness have surfaced 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 speak about an aid package to Ukraine. Johnson had another goal for the meeting: a recently signed executive order to put a pause on approval of new permits to export American liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Johnson told Weiss 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 those people in my state, I’ve talked to those people this morning, this is doing massive damage to our economy, national security,” Johnson said he told Biden.
But he said he also realized Biden was telling the truth. “He genuinely did not know what he had signed,” Johnson told Weiss. “And I walked out of that meeting with fear and loathing because I thought, ‘We are in serious trouble—who is running the country?’ Like, I don’t know who put the paper in front of him, but he didn’t know.”
