The New Yorker editor calls for Biden to step down after ‘antagonizing’ debate performance

The New Yorker magazine has joined other major publications in calling for President Biden to step aside after its editor said watching Biden perform during Thursday’s debate was an “agonizing experience.”

The New Yorker is now the third publication, alongside The New York Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, to call upon Biden to step-aside for a younger Democratic nominee.

“We have long known that Biden, no matter what issue you might take with one policy or another, is no longer a fluid or effective communicator of those policies,” The New Yorker’s editor, David Remnick, wrote.

“Asked about his decline, the Biden communications team and his understandably protective surrogates and advisers would deliver responses to journalists that sounded an awful lot like what we all, sooner or later, tell acquaintances when asked about aging parents: they have good days and bad days,” he wrote.

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President Joe Biden looks on as he participates in the first presidential debate of the 2024 elections with former US President and presumed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at CNN’s studios in Atlanta, Georgia, on June 27, 2024. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

Remnick wrote that watching Biden “wander into senselessness” moved observers to “pity” and “fear for the country.”

“Watching Thursday’s debate, observing Biden wander into senselessness onstage, was an agonizing experience, and it is bound to obliterate forever all those vague and qualified descriptions from White House insiders about good days and bad days,” he said.

“You watched it, and, on the most basic human level, you could only feel pity for the man and, more, fear for the country.”

President Biden, shown here with wife Dr. Jill Biden, faced presumed Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump, in the first presidential debate of the 2024 campaign season last week. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Remnick made his remarks despite defensive comments from Biden’s loyalists, like former President Obama, First Lady Jill Biden and Gov. Gavin Newsom.

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“Such loyalty can be excused, at least momentarily,” he wrote. “They did what they felt they had to do to fend off an immediate implosion of Biden’s campaign, a potentially irreversible cratering of his poll numbers, an evaporation of his fund-raising, and the looming threat of Trump Redux.”

President Joe Biden stands at his podium during the first presidential debate of the 2024 elections between himself and former president Donald Trump at CNN’s studios in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday, June 27, 2024. (Kevin D. Liles for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The New Yorker editor said that Biden staying in the race would be in direct opposition to his years of public service.

“To stay in the race would be pure vanity, uncharacteristic of someone whom most have come to view as decent and devoted to public service,” Remnick wrote.

“To stay in the race, at this post-debate point, would also suggest that it is impossible to imagine a more vital ticket,” he wrote.

Remnick concluded his piece by noting that there “is no shame in growing old” but rather there would be “honor” to step down and out of the race.

“It is sad to go to pieces like this, but we all have to do it. There is no shame in growing old,” he wrote. “There is honor in recognizing the hard demands of the moment.”

President Biden and former President Trump are facing off in the first presidential debate of the 2024 campaign. (Getty Images)

The New Yorker article came after the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The New York Times called for him to drop out of the race.

“Mr. Biden has said that he is the candidate with the best chance of taking on this threat of tyranny and defeating it,” The Times said. “His argument rests largely on the fact that he beat Mr. Trump in 2020. That is no longer a sufficient rationale for why Mr. Biden should be the Democratic nominee this year.”

“Mr. Biden answered an urgent question on Thursday night. It was not the answer that he and his supporters were hoping for,” the Times concluded. “But if the risk of a second Trump term is as great as he says it is — and we agree with him that the danger is enormous — then his dedication to this country leaves him and his party only one choice.”

President Joe Biden walks off with first lady Jill Biden following the CNN Presidential Debate at the CNN Studios on June 27, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia.  (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Following the debate, Democrats and liberal media figures were reportedly in “panic” after Biden’s performance.

The optics led to a full-on meltdown in Democrat-friendly media, with journalists at various outlets reporting on dozens of Democratic Party officials who said the 81-year-old Biden should consider refusing his party’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention.

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Biden gave no indication he would step down at his first rally following the debate Friday in Raleigh, North Carolina, insisting he is capable of beating Trump. 

“I can do this job, because, quite frankly, the stakes are too high,” Biden energetically said. “Donald Trump is a genuine threat to this nation.” 

This combination of pictures created on October 22, 2020 shows US President Donald Trump (L) and Democratic Presidential candidate and former US Vice President Joe Biden during the final presidential debate at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, on October 22, 2020. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI, JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

President Biden also addressed his stumbling performance, saying, “I don’t debate as well as I used to.”

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“I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done,” he told a roaring crowd that chanted “Four more years.”

Fox News Digital has reached out to the Biden campaign for comment.