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Stephen King appeared to suggest that Joe Biden should abandon his bid for re-election, amid mounting concerns over the US president’s political prospects.
Biden, 81, has faced calls to step down from the US election race, following a widely criticised debate performance against presumtive Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Writing on X/Twitter, The Shining author King – a longtime and vocal supporter of the Biden-led Democratic Party – implied that Biden’s decision to keep running could facilitate the rise of a hard-right alternative.
“Ruth Bader Ginsburg refused to resign, and we got Amy Coney Barrett as a result,” he told followers. “Draw your own conclusions.”
Late associate justice Ginsburg, long celebrated as a pioneer of the US judicial system, has been strongly condemned in recent years for refusing to step down from her position on the supreme court during Obama’s time in office.
When Ginsburg died in 2020, during the tail end of Trump’s time in office, her position was replaced by Barrett, shifting the politics of the supreme court further to the right, and paving the way for controversial overhauls of abortion legislation, among other laws.
On Tuesday (2 July), White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated that Biden does not have Alzheimer’s, a form of dementia, or another degenerative brain illness.
Asked by The Independent about the possibility, amid concerns over the president’s demeanour during last week’s debate against Trump, Jean-Pierre responded, “no”, later adding that Biden’s medical team had advised that a cognitive test “was not warranted”.
“I want to say we understand the concerns,” they told members of the press in attendance. “We get it — the president did not have a great night, as you all know. The president had a cold, he had a hoarse voice … but I will say this, and the president said this over the past couple of days… he knows how to do the job.”
“He knows right from wrong. He knows how to tell the truth, and again, he knows how to deliver for the American people,” she added.
While the prospect of replacing Biden in the run-up to the election remains a divisive one, support has already begun to rally around the sitting US vice president Kamala Harris.
