West Michigan's Morning News
Will President Biden Stay in the Race?
And this is West Michigan's morning news. Let's talk about the pressure from congressional Democrats on President Biden on West Michigan's morning news. Rory O'Neill NBC News Radio National correspondent. Hey Rory. Hey good morning Steve. So more on the record saying they wish the president would step down, but over the weekend he's essentially doubled down, right? It seems to be he had that interview that aired on ABC on Friday night again Sunday morning on this week. 22 minutes, ABC aired it uninterrupted, unedited, but the president essentially said it would take God Almighty to tell him not to run again, or to convince him not to run again. And we did get more calls from Democrats. Five now have publicly said that Joe Biden should drop his reelection bid. That's five House Democrats going public. Four more in-house leadership apparently on a call last night off the record saying the same thing. Roy, what number do you think is the magic number where it's just like every one of the party has to say, wait a minute, Joe, I know you said God Almighty, but I mean, at this point, you know, it's an overwhelming number. Yeah, we haven't seen a big name yet. I think it's going to be a name more than a number. And then how many other House Democrats will come forward once that big name does, you know, if Bill Clinton making this up, but if it were Bill or Barack Obama, even more where to say something, then you'd see the floodgates open and we're off to the races. But I think, you know, if a congressman from New York, I mean, Joseph Morrell and Mark Ticano and who's going, oh, Adam Smith, I mean, that's not moving the needle. Yeah, I saw over the weekend somebody I'd not heard of before Democrats say, this is just stuff that we've for the last two and a half years have seen Republicans doubling down saying, now, you know, what we've been talking about all this time? Well, look, Republicans don't want the change necessarily. You know, they want to they want to defeat Joe Biden, but they don't want to replace them because all the polls show Donald Trump doing very well now against Joe Biden. So if he is replaced, then it could be more of a struggle. So a lot of Republicans want to push but not push too far because they'd like to face Joe Biden this November. And could it take another poor performance in the next debate or, you know, wins the timeline cut off too to Brett's question about numbers? How does democratic leadership try to stick somebody in at the last minute if they have to? Well, we heard from Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut this week who said this week is incredibly important. Joe Biden has a press conference tomorrow. He's also hosting the NATO leaders in Washington this week. So Joe Biden is going to be on the presidential stage looking very presidential. So there are opportunities for him to sort of regain some momentum or at least get things back on the right track. The general agreement is Friday night's interview on ABC was fine, but it didn't go far enough to calm some of the concerns that were expressed after that terrible debate performance. As far as the calendar, there is a date that's coming up August 7th in order to satisfy some requirements in Ohio, but it really is. It's Joe Biden's nomination for the taking. He's the one that's going to have to step up and say no, thanks, because otherwise that bill's been wrong. Roy O'Neill, NBC News Radio, National Correspondent. Thanks.