MSNBC Hosts Report ‘Panicked’ Biden Inner Circle Discussing Dropping Out

Several MSNBC hosts reported on Thursday evening that members of President Joe Biden’s circle and the Democratic Party were “panicked” at his performance during the CNN debate against former President Donald Trump and were discussing what to do next.

Following the debate, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow noted, “It was hard to hear what he was saying because his voice was so weak and his halting delivery in his first couple of answers has got to have put a shock into the campaign.”

MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace then revealed, “I was on the phones for some of it after that became clear and there is a conversation happening inside Biden’s circle, and certainly a much more frank conversation happening inside the Democratic coalition, and I think there will be stories of a lot of concern about the performance tonight.”

After Maddow asked exactly what type of conversations were happening, Wallace replied that the “conversations range from whether he should be in this race tomorrow morning to what was wrong with him.”

MSNBC host Joy Reid revealed she had heard similar concerns:

I, too, was on the phone throughout much of the debate with Obama world people, with Democrats, with people who are political operatives, with campaign operatives. My phone really never stopped buzzing throughout and the universal reaction was somewhere approaching panic. The people who were texting with me were very concerned about President Biden seeming extremely feeble, seeming extremely weak, and I’ll just reiterate what I said earlier. President Biden had one job tonight, one primary job, and yes, it was to litigate Donald Trump’s criminality and all of those things, but he had to settle his own party. He needed to settle Democrats.

She explained:

Joe Biden’s job was to reassure them tonight. His job was to calm his party, to make them feel that, ‘Yes, I can do this. I have four more years in me. I have the ability and the stamina and the strength to do four more years.’ He did not do that. He did the opposite of that. He made them more panicked. The people who were texting me were even more panicked. They actually expected it to be better than it was, and now they’re in, I won’t say a full-fledged panic, but it’s getting there.

“I know for a fact that Joe Biden passionately believes that he is the only person who can beat Donald Trump, and he has evidence of it because he did it before,” said Reid. “He knows that he has certain demographic strength that Donald Trump cannot counter. He is the real working-class white guy that’s actually Donald Trump space, so he knows how to talk to them. He believes that he is the only person who can do it.”

She concluded, however, “The problem is, after tonight, his party doesn’t believe that.”

Watch above via MSNBC.