A top adviser to former President Obama offered a pessimistic assessment of President Biden’s make-or-break interview on ABC.
David Axelrod, who managed Obama’s two successful presidential campaigns, said he was “sad” to watch Friday’s sit-down.
“George Stephanopoulos asked him if he was willing to take a cognitive test, and he said, ‘I take a cognitive test every day,’ and while that may well be true, 75 percent of Americans believe he fails the test,” Axelrod told CNN in a post-interview analysis on Friday.
Biden again rejected requests to drop out of the race, saying only “Almighty God” could make him do so, but Axelrod said that wasn’t enough because polls show the incumbent candidate’s approval rating is declining nationally and in battleground states.
“And someone needs to tell him the truth, not God, but the people who love and care about him and his inner circle. The positions he portrays on the campaign trail don’t match reality,” Axelrod said.
Axelrod had been sounding the alarm about Biden’s age and warning for months that his mental health was declining, long before the CNN debate between Biden and Trump rekindled questions about his mental health.
In November, he cited Biden’s “age issue” as a major concern and warned that the president had at best a 50-50 chance of beating Trump in a rematch.
There has been no long-standing bad blood between the two men, and Biden has been known to privately call Axelrod a “nasty guy.”
Early assessments among Democrats suggest Biden has managed to weather the ABC attack line, but he still has a long way to go to assuage fears among party members that he could beat Trump in a 2024 rematch.
After the interview aired, Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) became the fourth House Democrat to call on President Biden to drop out of the race.
