admin
WASHINGTON. – US President Joe Biden must decide quickly whether to stay in the 2024 White House race, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a longtime Biden ally, said yesterday while declining to say definitively that she wanted him to run.
In an opinion piece published on Wednesday in the New York Times, Hollywood star George Clooney, a Democrat who co-hosted a fundraiser for Biden last month, withdrew his support.
Pelosi’s remarks, which ignored Biden’s repeated insistence that he remains in the race, suggested he could face a fresh wave of doubts from fellow Democrats.
For nearly two weeks the 81-year-old Biden has sought to stem defections by Democratic lawmakers, donors and other allies worried he might lose the Nov. 5 vote to Republican Donald Trump, 78, after Biden’s halting June 27 debate performance.
The president has said again and again that he will be the Democratic candidate and that he believes he can beat Trump.
Pelosi said on MSNBC she was encouraging her colleagues on Capitol Hill with concerns about Biden to refrain from airing them while he hosts NATO leaders i this week.
“I’ve said to everyone: let’s just hold off. Whatever you’re thinking, either tell somebody privately, but you don’t have to put that out on the table until we see how we go this week,” she said, describing Biden’s strong remarks at the NATO summit on Tuesday as “spectacular”.
She declined to say definitively that she wanted Biden to run. “I want him to do whatever he decides to do,” she said. “We’re all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short.”
Asked to respond, Biden’s campaign referred to a letter Biden sent Democrats in Congress that said he was “firmly committed” to staying in the race and beating Trump. It also noted Pelosi’s remark on Tuesday that she had “always been committed” to Biden. Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal echoed Pelosi’s message later on Wednesday, saying he was “deeply concerned” about Biden’s ability to win the race.
In his opinion piece, Clooney wrote: “It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate,” Clooney wrote. – Reuters
Online Reporter