In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Saturday, former Republican presidential primary candidate Nikki Haley urged former President Trump to prepare to face off against a younger rival after Biden’s questionable debate performance.
“They’re going to make a smart decision. They’re going to bring in young people, they’re going to bring in people who are dynamic, they’re going to bring in people who have experience,” Haley said. Said “Now is the time for Republicans to prepare and brace for what’s coming, because there is no way the Democratic Party will survive if we allow Joe Biden to remain the nominee,” the Journal article states.
Biden’s hoarseness and stuttering throughout the debate sparked anxiety among party members and raised questions about whether he should remain the leading Democratic candidate. Even staunch Democrats, including some who worked with former President Barack Obama, expressed misgivings about how the debate unfolded.
“Obviously the debate was awful,” former Obama administration speechwriter and “Pod Save America” co-host Jon Favreau posted on social platform X on Friday morning. “We must defeat Donald Trump. We must field a candidate who can do that.”
Biden and those around him are opposed to him stepping down as the presumptive Democratic nominee.
“Of course he’s not backing down,” Biden campaign spokesman Seth Schuster told The Hill after the debate performance.
Haley Said She watched Thursday’s debate with her husband and friends in her home state of South Carolina and quickly came to the conclusion that Biden faces political headwinds, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“I think it was shocking to a lot of people,” the former U.N. ambassador told The Wall Street Journal. “What we saw was that Trump was strong, but I don’t think that mattered because Biden was so astonishingly inept. He lost his train of thought and couldn’t follow the topics he was supposed to be talking about.”
Hill has reached out to the Biden and Trump campaigns.
