David Axelrod: “If for whatever reason there is a change at the top of the ticket…” pic.twitter.com/qJ33oUsmxy
— Conservative War Machine (@WarMachineRR) June 28, 2024
VIA MEDIAITE:
CNN commentator and former Obama administration official David Axelrod all but suggested President Joe Biden should be replaced as the presumptive Democratic nominee after Thursday’s debate.
A raspy Biden, 81, struggled through the debate while Trump, 78, uttered a slew of falsehoods. Early on, the president struggled to respond to a question about the national debt and concluded, “We finally beat Medicare.”
Trump pounced by responding, “He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death.”
“I just wanna say one thing, especially to you two guys,” Axelrod said on CNN while addressing Republican strategists Scott Jennings and David Urban after the event. “If for whatever reason there’s a change at the top of the ticket, you guys are in trouble with Donald Trump because the guy who was up there tonight is not a guy who’s going to inspire people. He did not show in any way that he has changed.”
Jennings replied by saying that “Trump won several policy exchanges tonight,” but agreed with Axelrod’s critique on Trump’s lack of optimism. However, he said viewers’ main takeaway from the debate will be Biden appearing old and feeble.
“But that’s not what I what I said, Scott,” Axelrod replied. “What I said was, if Joe Biden were not the candidate, if there was another candidate, I think Donald Trump would be in deep trouble.”
Axelrod was not alone among Democrats. After the debate, there was palpable panic among the hosts of MSNBC.
“My phone really never stopped buzzing throughout and the universal reaction was somewhere approaching panic,” Joy Reid said during the network’s post-debate coverage. “The people who were texting with me were very concerned about President Biden seeming extremely feeble, seeming extremely weak.”
