Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, urged President Joe Biden to end his 2024 candidacy in a somber statement Tuesday, predicting Biden’s performance in Thursday’s debate will effectively hand the election to former President Donald Trump if Biden isn’t replaced—making him the first sitting Democratic lawmaker to publicly call on Biden to stand down since the debate.
Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, in the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, June 5, 2024. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll ... [+]
Doggett encouraged Biden to “make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw,” in a statement that ended with the sentence: “I respectfully call on him to do so.”
Doggett said he “had hoped that the debate would provide some momentum” to change polls showing Biden trailing both Trump and Democratic senators in key battleground states, but that Biden instead “failed to effectively defend his many accomplishments and expose Trump’s many lies.”
Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., who ran against Biden for the Democratic nomination, is the only other sitting lawmaker who has called for his resignation from the race in the wake of the debate.
This is a developing story and will be updated.