Congressional Republicans call for Biden to resign

Almost as soon as President Biden announced his decision not to seek the Democratic presidential nomination, congressional Republicans began calling for him to resign from office in what appeared to be a coordinated effort.

Biden, when announcing his decision to step away from the presidential race, made clear that he intends to finish his term.

“If Joe Biden is not fit to run for President, he is not fit to serve as President,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said in a statement. “He must resign the office immediately. November 5 cannot arrive soon enough.”

Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said that, if Biden “is no longer capable of running for reelection, he is no longer capable of serving as President.”

“It is out of concern for our country’s national security that I am formally calling on President Biden to resign from office,” Daines said.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) accused Democrats of “trashing the primary choice of 14 million of their own voters.”

“Democrat party bosses just proved that they have absolutely no respect for their own voters,” Scalise said in a statement. “After lecturing others about democracy, they just forced Joe Biden off the ticket.”

Like Scalise, Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), the No. 3 House Republican, went further, baselessly accusing the Democratic Party of pushing a “blatantly corrupt and desperate attempt to cover up the fact that Joe Biden is unfit for office.”

“They are disenfranchising the votes of 14 million voters in the Democrat primary - all because they hid Joe Biden’s unfitness for office and now are reaping the deserved plummeting polls,” she said in a post on X.

A White House spokesman immediately pushed back on the notion that the president wouldn’t serve out his term.

Andrew Bates said Biden “looks forward to finishing his term and delivering more historic results for the American people.”

“President Biden inherited an economy in free fall and a skyrocketing violent crime rate from his predecessor, and turned both around to deliver the strongest economic growth in the world and the lowest violent crime rate in nearly 50 years,” Bates said. “He’ll keep fighting to protect Americans’ freedoms from radical abortion bans and attacks on the rule of law.”

But that didn’t stop the chorus of Republican leaders from insisting Biden do otherwise.

Other rank-and-file Republicans, including Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (N.Y.) and Sens. Mike Braun (Ind.) and Rick Scott (Fla.), also called for Biden to immediately vacate the Oval Office.

“For the same reason Joe Biden is unfit to run, he is unfit to continue serving and should resign immediately,” Malliotakis said in a statement.

“If Joe Biden can’t run for reelection, he is not capable of serving as president for the next six months and needs to resign NOW!” Scott posted on X.

Biden, in his letter announcing he would no longer seek the Democratic presidential nomination, said he will “focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”

And while Johnson, Scalise and Stefanik accused Democrats of disenfranchising primary voters, the three were among the more than 100 House Republicans who voted against the certification of the results of the 2020 election in the House on Jan. 6, 2021, in an affront to millions of American voters.

Notably, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) - who, at 82, is older than Biden - did not call for the president to step down from office. Instead, McConnell focused on criticizing Democrats for ignoring the will of their primary voters.

“Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has been busy in recent weeks trying to upend the expressed will of the American people in primary elections across the country,” he said in a statement reacting to Biden’s announcement. “Washington Democrats have not proven themselves any more capable than the President of delivering the secure borders, safe streets, and stable prices that working families deserve.”

Congressional Republicans’ call for Biden to resign echoed messaging from the Trump campaign and the larger GOP. In a statement issued a couple of hours after Biden made his announcement, Trump campaign senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles said Biden “cannot take himself out of a campaign for President because he is too mentally incompetent and still remain in the White House.”

And Richard Hudson, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said that if Biden is “mentally unfit to campaign, he is mentally unfit to have the nuclear codes.”

“Every House Democrat must now answer: is the president fit to serve the rest of his term?” he said in a statement.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), co-chair of the Biden-Harris campaign, told CNN that Republican calls for Biden to leave the White House are “ridiculous.”

“I think President Biden has shown in recent weeks his ability to handle and manage complex international matters to continue his lifelong record of service and his legacy of leadership in foreign policy, and to make hard calls and tough choices that helped make us stronger and safer here at home,” Coons said on Sunday. “I expect President Biden will finish out his term this year, and there are things that remain to be done.”

To ask Biden to step aside now, Coons added, “would be a grave disservice to our nation and a profound disrespect to his legacy and his lifetime of service.”

Joe Caiazzo, a Democratic strategist and Democratic delegate, said it is important to note that there is a difference between “the act of running for president and the act of being the president.”

“Those are two very different jobs, and it’s probably the most and then the second most difficult job on the face of the earth,” he said, noting that he believes Biden can successfully finish his presidential term.

Congressional Republicans, in their reactions to Biden’s announcement, also pointed the finger at Vice President Harris, arguing that she “co-signed” the president’s policies and decision to run for reelection.

“Joe Biden has been the worst President in my lifetime and Kamala Harris has been right there with him every step of the way,” said Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), former president Donald Trump’s running mate. “She owns all of these failures, and she lied for nearly four years about Biden’s mental capacity - saddling the nation with a president who can’t do the job.”

Stefanik said on Sunday she will introduce a resolution on Monday “condemning Kamala Harris’ role as Joe Biden’s ‘Border czar’ leading to the most catastrophic open border crisis in history.”

“Biden’s open border czar Kamala Harris and every elected Democrat owns this border crisis,” Stefanik said on a post on X.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), in a post on X, said she will introduce a resolution in the House on Monday calling on Harris to invoke the 25th Amendment and assume presidential duties. In the Senate, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) also said he’ll introduce a resolution urging Biden’s Cabinet to invoke the amendment.

But while Republicans last week publicly lambasted Harris, who Biden endorsed to be the next Democratic presidential nominee, Johnson told The Washington Post that having Harris atop the Democratic ticket would not change Republicans’ congressional campaign strategy. Republicans are seeking to keep and potentially expand their razor-thin majority in the House, and they’re also aiming to take back the Senate from Democrats.

“We’ve been encouraging our members to go out and message on policy, not personality, because it doesn’t really matter if they change the top of the ticket on the other side,” Johnson said. “If Kamala runs, she owns the same policies, you know, or whomever they put there.”

When asked last week by The Post how Republicans would react if Harris became the nominee, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) said: “That would be awesome.”

“She’s horrible. She had one job to do: The border. How did she do on that?” he said, referring to Harris’s role addressing the root causes of migration to the United States.

Republicans have repeatedly branded Harris as the “border czar,” a label she and members of the administration have rejected. Harris’s mission, as directed by Biden in the early days of the administration, was to meet with heads of state and other officials to tackle enduring problems that lead to migration to the U.S. border, including poverty and violence.

Emmer said Democrats are currently in a “romance stage” with Harris, but claimed that voters will grow disillusioned with the vice president once she starts “trying to string sentences together.”

“It’s only going to help the Trump-Vance ticket,” Emmer said. “Her against Trump would be very interesting.”