Vermont Sen. Peter Welch is the first Democratic senator to call on President Joe Biden to end his re-election campaign.
Welch wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post published Wednesday night, calling the 81-year-old Biden “one of the greatest presidents of our time.”
But then he noted that we “cannot undo President Biden’s disastrous debate performance” and that we “cannot ignore or dismiss the legitimate questions that have been asked since that night.”
“I understand why President Biden wants to run. He saved us from Donald Trump once and wants to do it again,” Welch wrote. “But he needs to reevaluate whether he is the best candidate to do so,” he wrote.
“I don’t think so,” the Vermont senator concluded. “For the good of the country, I urge President Biden to withdraw from the race.”
Vermont Sen. Peter Welch is the first Democratic senator to call on President Joe Biden to end his re-election campaign
Welch listed all the reasons why former President Donald Trump does not deserve re-election.
“Trump is a criminal. He’s a pathological liar. He’s a menace,” Welch said, adding that Trump will be “emboldened” by the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity.
The Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” which Trump has distanced himself from, contains an “extremist agenda,” the Vermonter argued.
But, Welch said, the national debate revolves around Biden’s competence and age.
“Only he can change it,” Welch insisted.
The senator added: “I make this assessment with sadness.”
He pointed out that while Biden won a larger percentage of the vote in Vermont than in any other state in the 2020 race, “ordinary Vermonters are worried he can’t win this time and they’re terrified of another Trump presidency.”
Vermont Sen. Peter Welch said the American public can no longer undo President Joe Biden’s disastrous presidential debate performance late last month
“We’ve asked President Biden to do so much for so many people for so long. It’s taken unparalleled selflessness and courage,” Welch said. “We need him to put us first, as he has done before.”
“I urge him to do it now,” Welch said.
Now that Welch has admitted this, a handful of Democrats from both chambers of Congress have begged Biden to withdraw.
A total of nine Democratic members of the House of Representatives have said it is time for Biden to step down.
The president has resisted so far.
Welch’s op-ed was published hours after actor George Clooney, an influential Biden supporter, asked the same question in his own op-ed, this time published in The New York Times.
Clooney was one of the co-hosts of Biden’s glitzy fundraiser in Los Angeles last month, where one of his so-called “freezing” episodes appeared to play out.
Biden remained on stage for a moment and was then led away by former President Barack Obama.
White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre claimed the footage had been misleadingly edited, calling it a “cheap forgery.”
But Clooney’s comments suggested the video contained the truth: that the 81-year-old had taken a step backwards.
The actor wrote that “the fight against time is the only fight he cannot win.”
“None of us can do that,” he continued.
“It’s heartbreaking to say, but the Joe Biden I was with at the fundraiser three weeks ago was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020,” Clooney said. “He was the same guy we all saw at the debate.”