‘He must bow out’: the media reacts to Biden’s historically bad debate performance

Here’s an overview of some of the reactions to Thursday night’s CNN debate:

The New York Times

As journalist Brian Stelter pointed out on X, there appeared to be a consensus from The New York Times Opinion desk on how Biden fared.

Opinion writers wrote that Biden is too old, had an “uncharacteristically bad night,” and had “terrible delivery.”

The one that’s likely to hurt Biden the most is from columnist Thomas L. Friedman, a friend of his, who penned the opinion piece: “President Biden Is a Good Man and a Good President. He Must Bow Out of the Race.”

Friedman said in the piece that he has been a friend of Biden’s since they traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan after 9/11.

“I watched the Biden-Trump debate alone in a Lisbon hotel room, and it made me weep,” he wrote, saying that it showed that Biden has “no business” running for reelection.

New York Post

The New York Post’s front page called the performance “JUST SAD.”

It continued: “Prez mumbles, stumbles, freezes in train wreck debate vs. Trump.”

The Post’s editorial board’s article called the performance “embarrassing,” going so far as to say that “millions just witnessed the end of a presidency live on television.”

The Washington Post

The Washington Post’s front page went with: “Biden struggles in testy debate.”

The analysis described the president’s voice as “thin and raspy” and said Biden appeared to lose focus.

The Post’s Editorial Board, meanwhile, described the debate as “ninety minutes of pain,” with Biden struggling to speak with authority and having a “weak” presentation style.

Perhaps more generously than other outlets, it described the president as having “his moments.”

Fox News

Fox News’ Mark Penn said “It will be hard for the president to recover from his performance,” in an opinion piece titled “Joe Biden’s debate gamble backfires.”

Liz Peek, also writing for Fox News, described Biden’s performance as shocking the nation and as “an astonishing disaster.”

She wrote: “Indeed, it is impossible to imagine that anyone who tuned into the first 2024 presidential debate could vote for Joe Biden to serve another term.”

CNN

In an article about the key takeaways from the debate, CNN, which hosted the event, said: “Biden’s age problem just got a lot worse.”

Stephen Collinson, a senior reporter for CNN Politics, wrote: “If Joe Biden loses November’s election, history will record that it took just 10 minutes to destroy a presidency.”

The headline described his performance as “disastrous,” throwing his reelection bid into “crisis.”

The Wall Street Journal

The front page of The Wall Street Journal went with the headline: “Biden, Trump Clash in Debate On Economy, Border, Abortion.”

An article by Molly Ball, The Journal’s senior political correspondent, offered the headline: “Biden’s Disastrous Night Stands to Alter Course of the Election.”

In it, Ball wrote that there “was little denying that, while an argument could be made for the incumbent and his record, Biden fell far short of making it convincingly.”

Columnist Peggy Noonan, in an opinion piece, called it an “unmitigated disaster” for Biden and the “worst night for an incumbent in history.”

The Financial Times

The headline for an opinion piece by Ed Luce, a columnist for the FT, was: “It is not too late for Joe Biden to go.”

It started with a devastating line: “The best that can be said of Joe Biden’s stumbling debate performance was that it took place in June.”

Commentators

There were also calls for Biden to withdraw his candidacy from prominent political commentators.

The journalist and pollster Nate Silver wrote in a blog post: “Joe Biden should drop out.”

He said the debate went worse than he could have ever imagined, adding: “It’s time for Biden to consider what’s best for his party, what’s best for the country and what’s best for his legacy — and that isn’t seeking the presidency until he’s 86.”

Noah Smith, the American blogger, also offered a bleak assessment of the debate performance. He wrote, “It’s difficult to overstate how bad Joe Biden looked in the first presidential debate.”

He argued that Trump is now the clear frontrunner for the presidency, which means it’s “time to think hard about what a second Trump term could mean.”

And podcaster Joe Klein did not mince his words in his summary of Biden’s debate performance.

“It was worse than disastrous. It was sad, it was humiliating,” he wrote. “Biden looked like a hospice patient who got lost on his way to the bathroom.”