Following last June’s disastrous debate performance by President Joe Biden, Barack Obama urged then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to be the bearer of bad news and convince Biden to drop out of the race, saying his own “fragile relationship” with the president prevented him from being the “best messenger.”
According to a deep-dive investigation by The New York Times, which was adapted from an upcoming book by reporters Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater, Schumer sat down with Biden in the president’s Delaware house last summer and told him he’d “go down in American history as one of the darkest figures” if he stayed in and lost to Donald Trump.
“The roughly 45-minute conversation, which took place on a screened-in porch overlooking a pond, was more pointed and emotional than previously known, and helps to explain how Mr. Biden came to the decision just over a week later to end his campaign,” the Times reported.
The confrontation came three weeks after the face-off with Trump that sparked a seismic shift among Democrats, who had previously attempted to brush off concerns about the president’s age and cognitive decline as MAGA-fueled media attacks. Still, even before Biden’s faceplant at the debate, Schumer had privately concluded that the questions surrounding the president’s fitness for office were too much for Democrats to overcome.
Schumer, though, had chosen for months not to do anything, feeling like convening colleagues to discuss the president’s future would only weaken the party as a whole, especially if those conversations leaked to the press. The debate, meanwhile, was regarded as a “gift” by Schumer as it finally presented the opportunity to start an “overdue discussion about the president’s political viability.”
After the debate, donors and Democratic lawmakers began ringing Schumer nonstop, pleading with him to tell the president he needed to drop out. While the Senate leader urged them not to go public with their complaints, some felt “waiting was the wrong strategy,” especially since Biden had not returned their calls or letters. Meanwhile, Schumer began having “frank conversations” with Obama and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries about replacing Biden on the ticket.
During a July 3 call with Biden, Schumer held back in explicitly urging Biden to drop out but did tell the president that the only way he could see his way through this would be to hold “spontaneous” events and “unscripted town halls” to put voters at ease about his age. While Biden’s advisers dismissed these concerns, Schumer told Democrats to refrain from publicly calling for the president to step aside, fearing that this would only “make it worse” and prompt Biden to dig in his heels.
Eventually, Obama revealed that he was worried that the party wasn’t doing anything as the days passed. On the flip side, he also didn’t think Biden would listen to him personally because the president still was sore about the 2016 election.
“He told Mr. Schumer that he himself had a fragile relationship with his former vice president, who still carried a chip on his shoulder over Mr. Obama’s decision to support Hillary Clinton’s candidacy in 2016. Having urged him not to run back then, Mr. Obama told Mr. Schumer, he wasn’t sure if he was the best messenger to tell Mr. Biden to step aside now,” the Times noted.
“You may be a better one,” the former president added.
It would be another week before Schumer made his way to Biden’s Rehobeth beach house for that emotional one-on-one that resulted in the president stepping aside. Prior to that, Biden further dug in and sent Democrats a letter saying he was sticking around, and he expected Democrats to fall in line.
Days after Biden’s letter, the Democratic caucus held a “grim” meeting with Biden’s advisers in which almost the entire caucus agreed that Biden had to go — even those who were close friends with the president. Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), usually quiet and stoic, said he could not support Biden’s re-election bid unless he provided reports from two neurologists saying he was fit to serve.
One of the only vocal supporters among the senators was John Fetterman, who grumbled that his colleagues had “no spine” and needed to “be for Joe Biden.” Schumer eventually scolded the first-term Pennsylvania senator aside, telling him that while he could “always express what you think in our caucus,” he shouldn’t “ever tell our members they have no spine.”
Inevitably, the majority leader sat down with the president to give him the harsh truth, letting him know that if there were a secret ballot held in his caucus, only five senators would express support for him to stay in the race.
“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. But worse — you go down in American history as one of the darkest figures,” Schumer told Biden on July 13. “If I were you. I wouldn’t run, and I’m urging you not to run.”
While Biden ultimately heeded that advice, paving the way for Vice President Kamala Harris to take his place, the president has still expressed the belief that he would have won if he had stayed in.
According to The Washington Post, Biden and his aides have told people following Trump’s victory that he could have defeated the incoming president. Biden would double-down on that sentiment during a press conference last week.
“I think I would have beaten Trump, I could have beaten Trump,” the president declared. ““And I think that Kamala could have beaten Trump and would have beaten Trump. It wasn’t about that. I thought it was important to unify the party.”
