The Washington Post has admitted that claims about the US president’s health were right all along
US President Joe Biden should not have sought reelection to begin with, but his staff concealed his infirmity until they could no longer do so, the Washington Post editorial board has said.
The Post made the admission in an editorial on Tuesday, which praised Biden’s “profoundly selfless decision” to drop out of the race and let the Democrats replace him with Kamala Harris.
“In retrospect, Mr Biden should not have sought reelection. The June 27 debate was worse than just a bad night, as the president maintained afterward. The 81-year-old had shown signs of slipping for a long time, but his inner circle worked to conceal his decline,” the Post editors wrote.
The US would have been better off, they argued, had he bowed out after the “surprisingly good showing” of the Democrats in the 2022 midterms. Had he stayed in the race, they continued, “a diminished Mr Biden, at the head of a dispirited party, would likely have lost in November.”
According to the Post, Biden “deserves recognition” for surrendering power and giving a chance to a new generation of leaders, “albeit via internal party machinations rather than the ballot box.”
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