We're now getting some new details about how Democrats pressured Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race. We previously reported that there was talk about invoking the 25th Amendment, but new details, assuming they are true, add another layer of intrigue.
According to veteran Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, who has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times, there is no way you can describe what happened to Biden as anything but a coup.
Here's how it went down, following Biden's shortened visit to Las Vegas on July 17, according to Hersh:
At that point, according to Emily Goodin, a Daily Mail reporter who was in the traveling press pool, the president was "deathly pale" and Air Force One flew at maximum speed to Delaware, where the president has a weekend retreat at Rehoboth Beach. The press pool was told that Biden had COVID. Nothing more was said on Air Force One. After Biden's return to Delaware, the White House told the public that Biden had contracted a COVID infection and would be in isolation. He was said to have upper respiratory symptoms, a runny nose, a cough, and was fatigued.
That was the last straw for a core group of Congressional leaders, government officials and some senior Biden funders who were withholding huge amounts of committed contributions. "There was pressure on donors to come across on their pending commitments," the official told me. "It was understood that Biden had a physical problem in Las Vegas and the family was saying no" to continued pressure from donors and senior Democrats in Congress to withdraw from the presidential campaign. Initially, the president could not be reached.
There have been rumors that Joe Biden had a medical emergency in Las Vegas, which we previously reported here. Hersh's sources appear to back that up.
Now, here's where it gets interesting:
By Saturday, July 20, former President Barack Obama was deeply involved, and there was talk that he would place a call to Biden. It was not clear whether Biden had been examined or just what happened to him in Las Vegas. "The Big Three," the official said, referring to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, continued to be directly involved. "On Sunday morning," the official told me, with the approval of Pelosi and Schumer,
"Obama called Biden after breakfast and said, 'Here's the deal. We have Kamala's approval to invoke the 25th Amendment." The amendment provides that when the president is determined by the vice president and others to be unfit to carry out the powers and duties of his office, the vice president shall assume those duties.
What's interesting about this story is not just that Barack Obama was identified as the one who threatened Biden with the 25th Amendment, but that he allegedly said that Kamala was on board with it. If Kamala was involved in the coup, why did Joe Biden endorse her?
As we previously reported, Biden's endorsement of Kamala was done out of revenge. We know that the Biden campaign was quietly polling Kamala Harris against Donald Trump, and Biden was convinced he was the only Democrat who could beat Trump. Heck, Barack Obama didn't even endorse Kamala right away because he doesn't think she can defeat Donald Trump, and he was reportedly blindsided by Joe Biden endorsing her. And Biden's endorsement resulted in the party quickly coalescing behind Harris, making it impossible to pass her over through an open process. You can imagine that Obama wouldn't have expected Biden to endorse the woman who was on board with ousting him via the 25th Amendment.
The details all appear to fit.
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