Vermont Sen. Peter Welch has become the first Democratic senator to call on President Joe Biden to drop his re-election campaign.
Welch wrote An opinion piece for The Washington Post which was released Wednesday night and called Biden, 81, “one of the greatest presidents of our time.”
But he then noted that “we cannot look away from President Biden’s disastrous performance in the debate” or “ignore or dismiss the valid questions raised since that night.”
“I understand why President Biden wants to run. He saved us from Donald Trump once and he wants to do it again,” Welch wrote. “But he needs to reevaluate whether he is the best candidate to do so,” she wrote.
“In my view, it is not,” the Vermont senator concluded. “For the good of the country, I call on President Biden to withdraw from the race.”
Vermont Sen. Peter Welch has become the first Democratic senator to call on President Joe Biden to drop his re-election campaign.
Vermont Sen. Peter Welch said the American public can’t forget President Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in the presidential debate late last month.
Welch listed all the reasons why former President Donald Trump does not deserve reelection.
“Trump is a criminal, a pathological liar and a menace,” Welch said, adding that the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity “will embolden him.”
The Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” which Trump has distanced himself from, contains an “extremist agenda,” the Vermonter argued.
But, Welch said, the national conversation has revolved around Biden’s competence and age.
“Only he can change it,” Welch insisted.
The senator added: “I make this assessment with sadness.”
He noted that while Biden won a higher percentage in Vermont than any other state in the 2020 race, “ordinary Vermonters are worried he can’t win this time and are terrified of another Trump presidency.”
“We’ve asked President Biden to do so much for so many people for so long. It’s taken unparalleled courage and selflessness,” Welch said. “We need him to put us first, like he’s done before.”
“I urge you to do it now,” Welch said.
With Welch’s admission, a handful of Democrats in both chambers of Congress have now called on Biden to step down.
In all, nine Democratic members of the House of Representatives have said it is time for Biden to go.
The president has so far resisted.
Welch’s op-ed was published hours after actor George Clooney, an influential Biden supporter, asked the same question with his own op-ed, this one published in The New York Times.
Clooney was one of the co-hosts of Biden’s glitzy fundraising event in Los Angeles last month, where one of his so-called “freeze” episodes apparently took place.
Biden remained on stage for a moment and was then escorted off by former President Barack Obama.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted the images had been misleadingly edited and called them a “cheap fake” from the podium.
But Clooney’s editorial suggested the video contained the truth: that the 81-year-old actor had lost his step.
The actor wrote that “one battle you can’t win is the fight against time.”
“None of us can,” he continued.
“It’s devastating to say, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fundraiser was not the Joe Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020,” Clooney said. “He was the same man we all saw at the debate.”
