David Axelrod blasts ‘sad’ Biden ABC interview: ‘Somebody really needs to be honest’
A top advisor to former President Obama offered a dismal assessment of President Biden’s make or break interview on ABC.
David Axelrod, the architect of Obama’s two successful presidential campaigns, called the Friday sitdown “sad” to watch.
“When George Stephanopoulos asked him if he’d be willing to take a cognitive test, he said, ‘I take a cognitive test every day.’ Well, the fact is, that may be true, but 75% of the American people think he fails,” Axelrod said in post-interview analysis on CNN Friday.
While Biden again rejected calls to leave the race, saying only the “Lord Almighty” could make him, Axelrod said that wasn’t enough as polls show the incumbent slipping nationally and in battleground states.
“And some somebody really needs to be honest with him about it. It’s not, it can’t be the good Lord, but it should be people who love and care for him and his closest advisers, his portrait of where he is in this race doesn’t comport with reality,” Axelrod said.
Long before Biden’s CNN debate with Trump reignited questions about his mental fitness, Axelrod had been sounding the alarm about age and spent months warning that Biden was slipping.
In November he flagged the Biden “age issue” as a major concern and warned then the president’s chances against Trump in a rematch would be at best 50-50.
There has been no love lost between the two men over the years and Biden is privately known to refer to Axelrod as a “prick.”
While initial reviews among Democrats suggest Biden managed to get through the ABC firing line, he still has a long way to go to assuage nervous party members he can beat Trump in the 2024 rematch.
After the interview aired Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) became the fourth House Democrat to call on President Biden to leave the race.
