Democrat Senate leader Charles Schumer was reportedly left in tears after meeting with President Joe Biden last summer to tell him about the very real possibility that he would be defeated in the presidential election.
“It was July 13, 2024, a humid summer afternoon just before four o’clock, and Mr. Schumer, the Democratic leader of the Senate, was about to make a blunt case to Mr. Biden that he needed to drop his bid for a second term,” The New York Times reported.
“If you run and you lose to Trump, and we lose the Senate, and we don’t get back the House, that 50 years of amazing, beautiful work goes out the window,” the senator said to the president. “But worse — you go down in American history as one of the darkest figures.”
“If I were you,” Schumer reportedly said, per The Times, “I wouldn’t run, and I’m urging you not to run.”
The issue Schumer faced was his concern that the famously stubborn president would dig in harder the more he was pressed, according to a new book titled, “Mad House: How Donald Trump, MAGA Mean Girls, a Former Used Car Salesman, a Florida Nepo Baby, and a Man With Rats in His Walls Broke Congress.”
Reportedly, Schumer stalled for a time before deciding on having the uncomfortable conversation with Biden, but that delay also prevented Democrats from holding a serious primary to replace him, the book contends.
Schumer knew for months that Biden was doing disastrously in polls, with his age and mental viability a massive concern for voters. However, it was his debate performance against then-former President Trump in late June that opened the door he was waiting for to have the troubling conversation with the commander-in-chief.
“So when Mr. Biden bombed during his June 27 debate with Mr. Trump, Mr. Schumer regarded it as something of a gift, a forcing mechanism to start an overdue discussion about the president’s political viability,” The Times reported.
“That night, about two dozen House Democrats, including Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, gathered for a watch party in the community room of the Washington waterfront luxury apartment complex where Mr. Jeffries and many of them lived, known as ‘the dorm.’ But the festive atmosphere dissipated immediately after Mr. Biden, pale and hoarse, shuffled onto the stage in Atlanta and began stumbling through his answers. By the end of the 90-minute debate, those who had been able to bear sticking around were in a panic,” the report said.
