Watergate reporter and longtime Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward said President Biden’s debate performance was a “political hydrogen bomb” and the public deserves to know what really happened.
Woodward joined MSNBC’s Ari Melber on Friday following the debate, where he said the performance was “so bad, so awful” that reporters must be looking for some explanation from his staff.
“I think the answer here is in reporting, in seeking very aggressively, an explanation — what happened here?” Woodward said. “We don’t want it to come out in some book or some memoir in a couple of years or a decade. We’d need to know now.”
Woodward speculated that during preparations ahead of the debate — a likely strategy for the Biden campaign, given it proposed the debate in the first place — that the president got into a “knock down, drag out fight” with his staff.
Either way, the public should know, Woodward argued.
The president appeared on stage with a hoarse voice and a slight cough. He stumbled with answers and at times didn’t finish his sentence. Sources familiar with Biden said he had a cold.
Biden’s debate performance sparked widespread fear among Democrats about his ability to beat former President Trump in the polls this fall. Some even are calling for him to step aside and let someone else attempt to defeat Trump.
Woodward said the calls for Biden to suspend his campaign are “inevitable” because of how bad his performance was.
“I sat there and watched it and I could not believe it. I said, not only is this a political hydrogen bomb for him and the Democratic Party, it, you know — what happened? What happened?” he said.
Calls for the president to drop out are not hasty, Woodward said, but more energy should go toward seeking an explanation behind the debate performance.
“Look, let’s step back. If a building blows up in downtown of some city, the story will be what happened and then the story will be how did this happen, why did this happen? And that’s where I’m very, very curious, because this was a mega disaster,” Woodward said.