Biden is currently facing international calls for him to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race, with even leftist Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva warning that “Biden has a problem.”
“The president has become slower, he’s taking longer to answer questions,” Lula told a local radio station, according to Bloomberg. “The US elections are very important for the whole world.”
Biden’s first presidential debate with former President Trump last month ended in a disastrous defeat, with Biden admitting days later that he “failed.”
“It was a terrible night,” Biden, 81, said Thursday in an interview with radio host Earl Ingram, “and the fact is, I failed.”
Democrats criticize Biden campaign’s response to debate aftermath as ‘arrogant’
While Republicans predictably criticized the president’s performance, even Democrats were panicking, forcing the president to hold crisis meetings with close allies to assure them he could still get the job done, and could do so for the next four years.
Former President Trump and President Biden held a debate in Atlanta on June 27th. (Getty Images)
But the debate sent shock waves through the international community, with some allies refusing to remain silent, believing the issue to be too important for sensitive treatment.
Matteo Renzi, who served as Italy’s prime minister from 2014 to 2016 and was a close friend of the Democratic Party during his time in office, wrote on social media platform X “Joe Biden can’t do that.”
Trump challenges Biden in second presidential debate — but there’s a catch
“He served the United States of America with honor as a senator, vice president and president,” Renzi wrote. “He does not deserve an ignoble end. It is incumbent on all of us to change horses.”
From left: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, European Council President Charles Michel, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Social Democrats), French President Emmanuel Macron, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and President Biden look on as parachutes drop during the G7 Summit in Fasano, Italy on June 13. (Michael Kappeler/Photo Alliance via Getty Images)
Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski struck a similar tone in a cryptic message about X that some saw as an unfavorable comparison between Biden and the great Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius.
“Marcus Aurelius was a great emperor, but he botched the succession by handing the baton to his incompetent son Commodus, whose disastrous reign marked the beginning of Rome’s decline,” Sikorski writes. “It’s about navigating your way into the sunset.”
President Biden, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, British Chancellor Rishi Sunak, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida attended a session on Africa, climate change, and development on the first day of the G7 Summit in Savelletri, Italy, on June 13. (REUTERS/Yara Nardi)
Marie Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, a German politician and current chair of the German Bundestag’s Defense Committee, told a media outlet, “The fact that the Democrats are unable to put up a strong candidate to oppose Trump and that someone like Trump could become president again would be a historic tragedy that would be felt by the whole world.” The Guardian reported..
White House staffers ‘disastrous’ over pressure on Biden: Report
Other European officials have reportedly begun privately arguing that Biden should step aside and replace him with someone more likely to beat Trump, with Vice President Kamala Harris said to be one of the leading candidates to take over the job.
President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on the Truman Balcony at the White House in Washington, DC on Thursday. (Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Bloomberg reported European officials are concerned about the impact of the U.S. elections on Ukraine and NATO as Russia remains aggressive, a source familiar with high-level discussions said.
Biden will have a chance to reassure America’s allies next week when he hosts a NATO summit in the United States, but every move he makes will be under intense scrutiny. An official who attended the G7 summit in Italy last month told Bloomberg that Biden’s apparent cognitive impairment created an air of anxiety at the meeting.
One person familiar with those conversations told The Washington Post that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni viewed Biden as “mentally superb” but physically weak — a concern that became even more pronounced after the debate.
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In Asia, there are growing fears in Japan and South Korea of a return to the tensions of the Trump era, when the administration encouraged expanded financial support for the military and aggressive trade practices intensified tensions. Reuters reported..
Fox News Digital’s Paul Steinhauser and Remy Numa contributed to this report.
