ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos admitted Tuesday that he does not believe President Biden can serve out a second term — days after conducting a closely watched interview with the commander-in-chief following his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump last month.
Stephanopoulos, 63, was recorded by TMZ answering a question from a passer-by in midtown Manhattan about Biden’s political future.
“Do you think Biden should step down?” the anonymous interrogator asked the “Good Morning America” co-host and “This Week” moderator. “You’ve talked to him more than anybody else has lately.”
“I don’t think he can serve four more years,” the soft-spoken Stephanopoulos responded after a pause.
“You don’t think he can serve four more years?” the questioner repeated before adding: “All right, that’s an answer.”
An estimated 8.5 million Americans watched at least some of Stephanopoulos’ 22-minute post-debate interview with Biden, 81, which aired in full July 5 and was rebroadcast on “This Week” the following Sunday.
During the sitdown, Biden failed to quell concerns about his cognitive fitness for the presidency following the June 27 CNN debate against Trump in Atlanta, claiming he had been “exhausted” and “sick” with a “bad cold” before whining that he let supposed cross-talk by Trump, 78, “distract me” — and even forgetting whether he had watched footage of his meltdown.
Biden also claimed that his frequent errors were a “bad episode” rather than a sign of permanent deterioration, but declined to submit to a cognitive exam to prove that statement.
“Look, I have a cognitive test every single day,” Biden told Stephanopoulos, a former White House communications director in the Clinton administration who has worked for ABC News in various capacities since 1997. “Every day, I’ve had tests. Everything I do. You know, not only am I campaigning, I’m running the world. And that’s not — it sounds like hyperbole, but we are the central nation of the world.”
What to know about the fallout from President Biden’s debate performance:
- President Biden’s poor performance in the first 2024 presidential debate has left even some Democrats unsure of his fitness for office and future as the party’s candidate.
- Former President Barack Obama admitted that Biden had a “bad” debate, while his rival former President Donald Trump suggested that he was in a “trance” and “choked.”
- Biden told a crowd at a North Carolina rally the day after the debate that he doesn’t “debate as well as I used to” — but insisted that he can still “do this job.”
- The New York Times editorial board called on the president to serve the country by dropping out of the race. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a similar editorial a day later.
- Biden gathered with his family at Camp David to assess the campaign’s future, with his son Hunter reportedly pushing for him to stay in the race. Family members questioned whether the president’s top advisers should be fired after the disastrous debate.
- In a pre-taped interview with ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos, Biden claimed that his “bad episode” at the debate was the result of a cold and not any cognitive issues.
- Biden has rejected calls for him to step down from fellow Democrats, insisting to Stephanopoulos that he is the most qualified to win the election. At a Wisconsin rally, he declared that he is “running and going to win again.”
Elsewhere in the interview, the president rejected calls to exit the race, saying: “If the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race’, I’d get out of the race, but the Lord Almighty’s not coming down.”
In another sound bite that left Democrats particularly aghast, the president indicated that he would be satisfied with a loss to Trump in the Nov. 5 election “as long as I gave it my all and I did as good a job as I know I could do.”
One Democrat close to the White House told The Post at the time that Biden’s performance was “depressing” and said they “felt like I was in an alternative universe.”
On Monday, Biden reiterated that he would remain in the race in a letter to congressional Democrats, a phone-in to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and a conference call with big-name donors.
So far, seven House Democrats have publicly called on the president to step aside and make way for a new candidate, likely Vice President Kamala Harris.
Reps for ABC News declined to comment.