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Daily Show host Jon Stewart has accused President Joe Biden of being “Trumpian” by refusing to even discuss the possibility of giving up the Democratic presidential nomination after his dismal debate performance last month in Atlanta.
On his podcast The Weekly Show, Stewart slammed Biden during a conversation with former Obama aides and Pod Save America hosts Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor as well as CNN commentator and former member of the South Carolina statehouse Bakari Sellers.
While Stewart hasn’t explicitly called for Biden to step aside, he criticized the president for not being open for discussion on the matter.
During a recent interview with ABC News, Biden suggested that only God could convince him to step aside.
“If the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race,’ I’d get out of the race. The Lord Almighty’s not coming down,” he said.
Stewart said on the podcast that it would be better if Biden “came out and said, ‘Look, I understand where I’m at in my lifespan and cycle and what I do. Here’s how this government works,’ rather than coming out and becoming Trumpian and saying, ‘You think someone else could hold NATO together? They could never. Only God can tell me to get out of the race.’”
He added: “If he were to come out and say, ‘Here’s my team. Here’s how we hold the line,’ but we’re not seeing any of that.
Nothing that’s been done inspires any confidence, other than the fatalism of, ‘It is what it is, and this is what we’re stuck with.’ And that’s the part that I think has degraded people’s trust in institutions and the government from the get-go. That’s a problem.”
The comedian added that a code of silence is stifling “what could be an incredibly productive conversation.”
The president faces ever-growing calls for him to step down in the wake of the June 27 debate against former President Donald Trump, where he appeared confused and frail, making several gaffes and appearing to lose his train of thought at multiple points.
Actor George Clooney, who headlined a fundraiser in Los Angeles for him mere weeks ago, urged Biden to step aside in a damning op-ed in The New York Times on Wednesday, writing that the “the one battle” he “cannot win is the fight against time.”
But Biden has remained resolute that he isn’t going anywhere.
A recent Democratic fundraising email from Biden digital strategy director Rob Flaherty said: “If you’re like me, you’re getting lots of texts or calls from folks about the state of the race after Thursday. Maybe it was your panicked aunt, your MAGA uncle, or some self-important Podcasters.”
Many interpreted the “self-important Podcasters” line to be a dig at the Pod Save America team.
Vietor told Stewart that Biden’s decline “has been pretty rapid,” adding that even though Biden has said he had a “bad night,” there had been concerns before the debate.
“The in-person fundraiser I saw in Los Angeles a couple weeks before the debate was as bad as the debate,” Vietor said on the podcast. “Everyone I walked out with was like, ‘That was chilling.’”
He added: “He had just flown back from Italy, so everyone was like, ‘He must be so, unbelievably jet-lagged,’ but obviously, there is a more systemic problem.”
“It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010,” he added. “He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
