Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, will go to the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, June 5, 2024, for a House vote.
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Texas Rep. Lloyd Doggett on Tuesday urged President Joe Biden to “make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw” from the 2024 presidential race.
Doggett, 77, is the first sitting Democratic lawmaker to formally call on his party’s current members to abandon their re-election bid against the presumptive Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump.
The call significantly heightened the pressure on the 81-year-old Biden, whose disastrous debate with Trump last week triggered waves of panic among his supporters about his ability to compete in November. Win and serve four more years in the White House.
But Biden and his team have so far rejected any suggestions that he withdraw from the race.
In response to Doggett’s statement, a Biden campaign official told NBC News: “He’s here to stay.”
That promise and other post-debate reassurances from Biden and the campaign have done little to quell growing concerns among Democrats, some of which have entered public view.
“I think it’s a legitimate question, is this an interlude or is it a condition?” former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Tuesday on MSNBC.
She suggested Biden hold multiple face-to-face interviews with “serious reporters” to reassure his allies. Biden has participated in fewer press conferences or interviews than many of his modern peers.
ABC News announced Tuesday afternoon that Biden will sit down with news anchor George Stephanopoulos for his first one-on-one interview since the debate.
The interview will apparently not be broadcast live: ABC said it will air the first segment on “World News Tonight” on Friday, followed by a longer interview on “This Week” on Sunday .
Doggett, meanwhile, explicitly tied his decision on Biden to the president’s performance in Thursday’s debate.
“President Biden continues to trail Democratic senators significantly in key states and trails Donald Trump in most polls,” Doggett said in a press release. “I had hoped this debate would Provide some motivation to change that.”
“This is not the case,” he wrote. “Instead of reassuring voters, the president has failed to effectively defend his many accomplishments and exposed Trump’s many lies.”
“The risk of a Trump victory is too great – to assume that a situation that cannot be reversed in a year, a situation that was not reversed in the debate, can be reversed now, is too risky.”
The Texas Democrat also warned of the threat posed by Trump’s re-election as president, pointing to the Supreme Court’s decision this week to grant the former president “presumptive immunity” for all official conduct.
Doggett’s statement said, “A newly immune Trump could lead the United States into a long, dark, authoritarian era uncontrolled by the courts or a compliant Republican Congress.”
He encouraged Biden to follow the lead of former President Lyndon Johnson, who voluntarily declined to seek re-election.
“(Johnson) made the painful decision to withdraw under very different circumstances. President Biden should do the same,” Doggett said.
“My decision to make these strong reservations public is not taken lightly and does not in any way diminish my respect for all that President Biden has accomplished,” he said.
“Recognizing that unlike Trump, President Biden’s first commitment has always been to our country, not himself, and I hope he will make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw.”
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