President Biden's rough performance at the CNN Presidential Debate has caused an earthquake across the media landscape, ranging from "dismal" reviews to vocal calls on the left for him to withdraw from the 2024 race.
CNN's John King put a spotlight on the "very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party" that began in the early minutes of the debate.
"This was a game-changing debate in the sense that right now, as we speak, there is a deep, a wide and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party. It started minutes into the debate and it continues right now," King said. "It involves party strategists, it involves elected officials, it involves fundraisers. And they‘re having conversations about the president’s performance, which they think was dismal, which they think will hurt other people down the party in the ticket, and they‘re having conversations about what they should do about it."
King's CNN colleague Kasie Hunt similarly wrote on X, "The voice, open-mouthed look, and visual contrast between President Biden and former President Trump all have Democrats I'm talking to nearly beside themselves watching this debate."
NBC News' Chuck Todd admitted that Biden looked like the "caricature" conservatives have painted of him, specifically over his mental acuity. The debate came after a flood of liberal anger toward a Wall Street Journal report earlier this month that raised questions about the president's viability.
"And there were no clips tonight, right? You saw it before your eyes," Todd said.
"Trump’s taken control of the momentum of this debate — despite lying and living in an alternate reality — and Biden simply comes across as a somewhat dazed punching bag," Bloomberg Opinion editor Tim O'Brien wrote on X.
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MSNBC host Joy Reid, one of the faces of the network's political coverage that unabashedly supports the president, bizarrely complained about how the Biden campaign made the fatal mistake of "putting him on the right" side of the stage.
"Why would you put him on the right?" Reid asked. "Because Biden likes to look over at the moderators and to look away. Had he been on the left, he would have been facing Donald Trump… He looked like he was looking off camera! Every decision they made exacerbated the problem!"
However, the most stunning fallout of the first presidential debate was the open floodgates of the media calling on Biden to step aside.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, a longtime Biden ally, wrote the debate "made me weep" and realize Biden should step aside.
"I cannot remember a more heartbreaking moment in American presidential campaign politics in my lifetime — precisely because of what it revealed: Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election," he wrote.
"I wish Biden would reflect on this debate performance and then announce his decision to withdraw from the race, throwing the choice of Democratic nominee to the convention," fellow New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote on X.
"Someone like @gretchenwhitmer or @SherrodBrown or @SecRaimondo could still jump in and beat Trump," Kristof added, referring to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, and Biden's Commerce Sec. Gina Raimondo.
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"If Biden truly believes Democracy is on the line, he should step aside and let another Democrat step in to take on Trump. Put the country first," said Alyssa Farah Griffin of "The View."
"Joe Biden should save his legacy by ending his candidacy," Vox correspondent Eric Levitz wrote.
"This is a disaster," Financial Times associate editor Edward Luce panicked online. "Democrats need to end their self-imposed censorship on Biden and fix this. There's two months until the convention. Other countries hold general elections in less time than that."
"It’s over. Biden looks and sounds ancient. Losing his train of thought. Speaking in a barely audible whisper. They have to pull him!!!" The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur exclaimed.
The Atlantic's Mark Leibovich penned a piece early Friday titled "Time to go, Joe."
"Biden needs to step aside—for the sake of his own dignity, for the good of his party, for the future of the country," Leibovich told readers.
The aggregate website Drudge Report blared the headline "OPERATION: REPLACE BIDEN."
"DEMS SCRAMBLE WITH 130 DAYS TO GO! DEBATE CATASTROPHE," Drudge Report wrote in all caps. It included a poll question over who would be the best Democrat to replace him out of Hillary Clinton, Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Kamala Harris or "Other."
CNN commentator Van Jones, who cried for joy when Biden won the 2020 presidential election, offered an emotional plea for the president to step aside.
"I love that guy as a good man. He loves his country. He’s doing the best that he can. But he had a test to meet tonight, to restore confidence of the country and of the base, and he failed to do that," Jones said. "And I think there’s a lot of people who are going to want to see him consider taking a different course now."
"We’re still far from our convention and there is time for this party to figure out a different way forward if he will allow us to do that. But that was not what we needed from Joe Biden," he added. "And it’s personally painful for a lot of people. It’s not just panic. It’s pain of what we saw tonight."
