Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) , a longtime confidant to President Joe Biden , suggested Friday the president was considering whether to drop out of the race — before walking back the remark hours later.
Coons's comments came on a day Biden's candidacy was further thrown into doubt, with the number of sitting Democrats calling on him to end his campaign climbing up to 30 .
“This is an internal party matter and a matter of the campaign that is playing out very publicly,” Coons told the Aspen Security Forum on Friday. “I think our president is weighing what he should weigh, which is who is the best candidate to win in November and to carry forward the Democratic Party's values and priorities in this campaign.”
A short time after, Coons took to social media in what appeared to be a backtracking of sorts.
“I fully support the president. He's told me he's in it to win it,” the Delaware senator posted on X. “I'm with him 100% because I know he can beat Trump just like he did last time.”
In his initial remarks, Coons, who is a national co-chairman of Biden’s reelection campaign, touted the president’s performance at the NATO summit last week as evidence that he remains physically and mentally fit for the demands of the office. Yet he referred to the president as merely the “likely nominee” of the Democratic Party — an appellation that would seem to acknowledge the possibility that Biden could heed the growing chorus of Democratic politicians who want him to stand aside.
Coons said during his remarks that he was “confident” Biden is “hearing what he needs to hear from colleagues, from the public” and conceded there is “a lot of concern and anxiety about this because the stakes are so significant."
He added: "The differences between our two candidates — our likely nominee, Joe Biden [and] the [Republican] nominee Donald Trump … the one thing that unites every Democrat I've heard from is they believe Donald Trump should not be returned to the White House.”
Coons added in a moment of levity that he had heard from "roommates, ex-girlfriends, people I didn't realize still had my cell phone number" when it came to people expressing their opinions and concerns.
Biden has resisted pressure from Democratic Party powerbrokers and political observers who believe that his poor performance in last month’s debate with former President Donald Trump exposed him as too old to run for reelection. Biden rebuffed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) private exhortation to stand down, according to reports, but his refusal has been answered by a growing amount of public pressure.
"While the decision to withdraw from the campaign is President Biden's alone, I believe it is in the best interests of our country for him to step aside,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) said Friday morning. “By passing the torch, he would secure his legacy as one of our nation’s greatest leaders and allow us to unite behind a candidate who can best defeat Donald Trump and safeguard the future of our democracy.”
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Coons, notwithstanding his stated belief that Trump’s return to the White House would have dire “consequences,” signaled to the audience of foreign policy and national security experts that Congress could keep U.S. foreign policy on track in any case.
“Anxious Americans need to be reassured that there are strong bipartisan relationships in the Senate,” he said. “It is important that folks realize the Senate is a center of stability, in particular, on national security and foreign policy. … Figuring out how we have a continuous focus on foundational issues of our values and stability and our democracy, regardless of who is president, is what I believe the Framers envisioned as the role for the Senate.”
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