Biden pressure mounts as number of Democrats and senators calling for resignation rises to 36 - Live updates

36 Democratic lawmakers have publicly called for President Joe Biden, who is currently self-isolating at his beach house in Delaware after contracting COVID-19, to bow out of the 2024 race.

Among these lawmakers is Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, who said the president “didn’t seem to recognize him” at the Normandy, France event in a recent op-ed for The Boston Globe.

“Of course, that can happen as anyone ages but, as I watched the disastrous debate a few weeks ago, I have to admit that what I saw in Normandy was part of a deeper problem,” Moulton wrote.

In the three weeks since his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump, the 46th president has shrugged off ever-louder calls from within his own party to make way for a younger candidate to take on Trump in November.

Several influential Democrats, including Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer, reportedly called on Biden to drop out in private.

While the president has repeated in interviews that he is going nowhere, Axios has reported that he could drop out as soon as this weekend.

The Trump campaign is reportedly already planning for a potential battle with Kamala Harris if Joe Biden decides to drop out of the 2024 race.

That’s included drawing up attack ads, poll-testing Harris’s vulnerabilities on various issues, and compiling opposition research, two individuals briefed on the matter told The New York Times.

The Trump camp’s thinking is that if Biden drops out, Harris will be the most likely replacement, given that the Democrats wouldn’t want to alienate the Black voters in their base by sidelining the nation’s first Black vice-president, the individuals told the paper.

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