High-ranking Democratic operatives threatened to force Joe Biden out of office unless he resigned, sources told The Post.
The well-orchestrated “palace coup” to stop the faltering president from seeking re-election had been in place for weeks, but Biden resisted every step of the way, according to sources.
Part of the elaborate strategy to remove Biden from the race was allowing him to debate Republican candidate Donald Trump last month on live TV in Atlanta.
During the 90-minute debate, Biden appeared confused and slack-jawed, and at one point, he froze up, with his shocking performance turning the tide against him. “That debate was a set-up to convince Democrats that he couldn’t run for president,” a source close to the Biden family told The Post Monday.
As calls for him to bow out mounted, Biden insisted he would continue, but party bigwigs threatened to invoke the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution. The source added that the Amendment allows the vice president and cabinet members to declare the president unfit to serve and force him to step down.
The White House and representatives from the Democratic National Committee did not immediately respond to The Post’s requests for comment.
Although Biden immediately endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate for president, the source said Democratic delegates would be strongly encouraged to back Arizona senator and former astronaut Mark Kelly for president at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.
Some holdouts have yet to endorse Harris as Biden’s successor despite less than a month until the convention and only four months until election day.
Most notable among them is former President Barack Obama. “We will be navigating uncharted waters in the days ahead,” Obama said Sunday.
Following the debate, the source said that first son Hunter Biden became more involved in his father’s business and insisted on attending every official and unofficial meeting.
“Hunter felt he [Joe Biden] was being set up, and he was very concerned about his father,” the source said. “These people, these officials, were not on Joe’s side.”
The source said that Biden’s staff did not have any forewarning about the bombshell decision to pull out of the race, which was known since at least Tuesday. The source said many were shocked by the letter posted to Biden’s X account, as it was typed on his private letterhead rather than White House notepaper and signed electronically.
“Everyone was shocked,” the source said. “It was pretty telling that Jill Biden tweeted a heart emoji and nothing else.”
Democratic Party insiders have known for at least two years how Biden was in decline, said the source. “When I saw him a couple of years ago, it was frightening,” said the source. “He was repeating slogans and had no idea who I was.”
