Republicans said Sunday that President Biden’s decision to withdraw from the 2024 campaign doesn’t go far enough and he must relinquish the White House immediately.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn said the decision to withdraw is an acknowledgment he’s not up to the job.
“But he didn’t go far enough. If Joe is too weak to stay in the race for the presidency, he should resign as our Commander-in-Chief immediately,” the Tennessee Republican said.
Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, the GOP nominee for vice president, had been calling for the president to leave the White House even before he made the announcement to quit the race.
“If Joe Biden ends his reelection campaign, how can he justify remaining President?” Mr. Vance said on X on Sunday. “Not running for reelection would be a clear admission that President Trump was right all along about Biden not being mentally fit enough to serve as Commander-in-Chief. There is no middle ground.”
National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Richard Hudson said there are too many momentous parts of the president’s job to have it in the hands of someone incapable of running a political campaign.
“If the president is mentally unfit to campaign, he is mentally unfit to have the nuclear codes,” Mr. Hudson said.
He called the fiasco of Mr. Biden’s last few months “a scandal of historic proportions.”
Mr. Biden, in a letter posted online, said he will relinquish the Democrat Party’s presidential nomination but signaled he plans to stay in the White House. He said he will focus on the end of his term.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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