Politics
In deep-blue L.A., Democrats feel worried, betrayed, stoic about Biden's future
Even in the heart of the most Biden-loving parts of Los Angeles County, the president is facing grumbles after his resounding failure of a performance at last week’s debate.
“Biden needs to go sit down, have his medication and take a nap. His time is up,” said Daisy Williams, who voted for Biden in 2020 but said she wouldn’t participate in November’s election after watching last week’s debate. “I’ve never seen something so crazy in my life. We in trouble … That debate was a joke.”
Biden’s debate performance — in which he delivered meandering, sometimes incoherent thoughts in a weak, raspy voice — has shaken among even the most ardent Democrats. While the party shuddered and its leaders hastily began arguing over whether to replace the incumbent president on the ticket, voters in the deepest blue parts of Los Angeles County mulled Biden’s future, too.
California — and Los Angeles County in particular, which supported Biden by 71% in 2020 — is a sea of support for the president. But some precincts in Inglewood and South Central L.A. are even bluer, delivering more than 94% support for the president in the 2020 election.
In a series of informal interviews, some residents in these areas said they’d stand by the president, while others said he should let someone else take on former President Trump in November, perhaps Vice President Kamala Harris.
In the West Athens neighborhood south of Inglewood, where one precinct’s support for Biden reached 95% in 2020, Williams expressed dismay at her options for president. If Biden stepped aside, she said she’d reconsider her decision not to vote.
The 65-year-old certified nurse’s assistant called the election a choice between “a criminal and a person that has dementia.”
Biden does not have any form of dementia, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said in a press briefing Tuesday.
Biden has not publicly wavered from his commitment to running for reelection, though he has reportedly been discussing whether to step aside with his closest family members and advisors.
A CNN poll released Tuesday showed that 56% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning registered voters think their party would have a better chance at winning the election with a candidate other than Biden. The first polls released since the debate show Trump beating Biden.
(Faith Pinho/Los Angeles Times)
But Daniel Rodriguez, a Democrat who voted for Biden in 2020 and plans to again in November, was unfazed by Biden’s shaky debate performance.
“I did see that, but I just think he has a lot of things on his mind,” Rodriguez said. “He’s overwhelmed.”
As a caregiver for people between 50 and 90 years old, Rodriguez, 50, said his job is to advocate for the elderly and “have 100% their back.” His work, Rodriguez said, has shown him that some older adults remain sharp mentally even if they don’t always express themselves well.
“I see people who really had a good head on their shoulders — they still got it going on, they’re still smart,” he said. “So [do] not give up on them, you know? … They have a say-so in this country.”
Janice Gatlin, 66, had the opposite reaction to the debate. She said she kept trying to turn away from the TV screen and Biden’s spectacular failure, but couldn’t stop looking and sat through the whole “upsetting” performance.
“Biden, he’s just at that age where it’s time to retire. Because he was lost! I was embarrassed for him. It hurt me, because I voted for him,” she said. Harris, she added, would be a good alternate. “Time for her to step up,” Gatlin said.
Biden made a handful of public appearances after the debate, including a lively speech he gave the following day at a rally in North Carolina. Critics said he appeared more energetic because he relied on a teleprompter. But for Gatlin, it didn’t matter — the president’s debate performance, she said, showed he is no longer fit for office.
“He needs to step down and think about the country,” Gatlin said, adding that other countries are watching the U.S. election. “Nobody’s scared of him. He’s not even talking loud — no bass in his voice, nothing.”
(Faith Pinho/Los Angeles Times)
For Antinya Walker, 19, who says she will be voting in her first presidential election this fall, the debate made her pick simple: She’s voting for Trump.
The Los Angeles resident, who was running an errand to a local Big Lots, said she believed Biden was against women’s rights. She blamed him for tightened abortion restrictions across the country — though Trump takes credit for appointing the conservative Supreme Court justices who led to Roe vs. Wade being overturned, undoing nationwide abortion access.
Abortion is widely seen as Democrats’ winning ticket in elections. But last Thursday, Biden struggled to articulate a clear vision for restoring abortion care access in the country, instead making a confusing metaphor to a pregnancy’s trimesters and bungling the Democrats’ key issue. Walker said she stopped watching the debate after hearing Biden’s “horrible” response to the question.
“How are we supposed to have faith in a president that can’t even communicate right?” Walker said. “I feel like Trump is our best bet right now. I pray for America.”
(Faith Pinho/Los Angeles Times)
Still, in this bluest part of L.A. County, Biden retains supporters, folks like Harvey Woodruff, a retired grocery store and security worker.
“He looked a little fatigued. The man’s on the job, what do you expect?” Woodruff said. He said he’s grateful for Biden’s running of the economy in the past four years. “Two thumbs up, excellent job. I see no reason why we cannot have him in there for another term.”
Trump presents a greater threat to the country’s democracy, Woodruff said, adding that he expected Trump would pardon his own criminal conviction if he were elected president.
The 67-year-old was riding his bike from his Inglewood neighborhood, where 95% of votes went for Biden in 2020, to Darby Park, on his way to meet a friend at the beach. After watching Biden’s difficulty at the debate, Woodruff said he was reminded to have a checkup with his doctor.
Politics
Top Dems planning meeting about Biden's future despite president's vows to continue campaign
Top Democratic congressional leaders are planning to hold a meeting to discuss President Biden’s fledgling re-election campaign, even as Biden himself has struck a defiant tone amid calls to drop out of the race.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., is leading a virtual meeting with top Democrats on Sunday, with leaders expected to discuss the path forward for Biden’s campaign, according to an NBC News report that has been confirmed by Fox News.
The meeting will feature Jeffries and top committee Democrats, a person familiar with the arrangement told Fox News, but will not be a meeting of the full Democratic caucus.
CRITICS PILE ON BIDEN FOLLOWING ABC INTERVIEW, BLAST HIS REFUSAL TO COMMIT TO COGNITIVE TEST: ‘DISQUALIFYING’
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and President Biden (Getty Images)
The meeting comes after Biden’s 22-minute interview with ABC News on Friday, which the Biden campaign hoped would ease fears that the president doesn’t have what it takes to continue the campaign and defeat former President Donald Trump in December. Instead, the interview set off a new round of fears among Democrats who were already concerned by Biden’s disastrous debate performance last week.
“Look, Biden looked better and certainly more coherent than he looked during the debate, but there’s nothing in this interview that is calming the nerves of jittery Democrats who fear that Joe Biden is on a trajectory to lose this race, to lose to Donald Trump,” ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl said after the interview.
Biden, however, struck a defiant tone, saying at one point that he would not drop out unless “the Lord Almighty were to come down and say, ‘Joe, get outta the race.’”
But Democrats, many of whom have expressed fears a lackluster performance by Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket and cost the party Congressional seats, are seemingly not persuaded.
President Biden raised eyebrows when he expressed uncertainty about whether he had watched his debate performance in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. (Screenshot/ABC)
PRESIDENT BIDEN FACES THE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL WEEKEND OF HIS POLITICAL CAREER
The meeting of House committee leaders, which is slated for 2 p.m. Sunday, is not part of any regularly scheduled meeting for top Democrats, NBC reported. Meanwhile, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., is organizing a meeting among Democratic senators next week to discuss Biden’s electability and the potential fallout for down-ballot races.
While some Democrats have kept concerns about the president’s electability private, a growing number have publicly called on Biden to step aside.
Meanwhile, Biden defenders such as Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., have urged others not to panic. Fetterman told NBC News that he “can’t think of a single situation where panicking or freaking out has made a situation better.”
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa. (Nathan Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“He’s the one person who has beaten Trump before,” Fetterman said of Biden.
The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.
At the moment, state law limits rent increases for tenants in apartments and corporate-owned single-family homes that are older than 15 years. The cap is set at 5% plus inflation, with a maximum increase of 10%.
Local jurisdictions can impose stricter caps, but with limits.
State law generally prohibits local governments from putting rent control on single-family homes, as well as apartments built after February 1, 1995. In some cases, like the city of Los Angeles, that cut-off date is even earlier.
The law allows property owners to charge whatever they want when a unit becomes vacant. Once a new tenant moves in, the limitations take effect.
If Proposition 33 passes, it would repeal the state law that bans localities from capping rent on vacant units, single-family homes and apartments built after Feb. 1, 1995 or earlier.
Local governments wouldn’t be required to regulate rents on such properties, but they could if they wanted to.
Politics
Veterans respond to Biden claiming he's been 'in and out of battles': 'Don't make it about you'
President Biden claimed Thursday he’s been “in and out of battles” while addressing an audience of military service members and their families at Thursday’s White House Fourth of July Barbecue.
“And by the way, I’ve been all over the world with you. I’ve been in and out of battles,” the president, who never served in the military, though as Commander-in-Chief, met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine in February 2023 and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in October 2023.
It’s not the first time Biden has come under fire for remarks to military service members. In 2019, Biden came under fire for conflating and misrepresenting war stories after the Washington Post exposed a “moving but false war story” told on the campaign trail. Biden, then the former vice president and candidate for president, later defended what he said, saying the “central point” was accurate.
Veterans 4 America First Institute, a non-profit veterans’ group, responded to Biden’s Fourth of July claims in an interview with Fox News Digital.
Peter O’Rourke is a former Acting Secretary for Veterans Affairs under President Trump and a veteran of both the Air Force and Navy. Darin Selnick, Former Veteran Affairs Advisor for the White House Domestic Policy Council, is also a former Air Force veteran. They both currently serve veterans in their roles with Veterans 4 America First.
GOLD STAR FAMILY SPEAKS OUT AFTER BIDEN FALSELY CLAIMS NO TROOPS HAVE DIED ON HIS WATCH: ‘SHAME ON YOU’
President Biden made a gaffe at the White House Fourth of July barbecue Thursday, claiming to have been ‘in and out of battles’ to military service members and their families. (Getty Images)
“It’s always bad form when a politician tries to make it about themselves and somehow equate their service with the service of those men and women who serve,” Selnick said. “So the only one who has been in battle are the men and women who served, not President Joe Biden.”
DEM GOVERNOR AND TOP BIDEN SURROGATE URGES PRESIDENT TO ‘CAREFULLY EVALUATE’ HIS PATH FORWARD
“The men and women who serve have been all over the world in battle. So just keep it to that. Don’t try to equate what you’re doing with that, cozy up and and and that sort of thing. Just speak about the servicemen and women, think about the country; don’t make it about you. That’s the sad part, because every time Joe Biden speaks he always somehow tries to make it about him,” Selnick added.
“…every time Joe Biden speaks he always somehow tries to make it about him.”
Former Acting Secretary of the VA Peter O’Rourke also critiqued the president’s claim.
“I think the disappointment Darin and I both share is the continued disrespect, whether it’s examples of veterans that have been harmed in ways that don’t make a lot of sense, or just not really providing the efforts that we’d love to see our presidents give when it comes to articulating their concerns or their feelings toward veterans,” he said.
US President Joe Biden speaks during a 4th of July event on the South Lawn of the White House on July 4, 2024 in Washington, DC. The President is hosting the Independence Day event for members of the military and their families. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
O’Rourke continued, saying, “we saw this example, trying to find every opportunity to politicize, trying to sneak in a jab at his political opponent on a day where really, we should just be celebrating our independence. He was there to recognize and honor both veterans and active duty members.”
Veterans 4 America First Institute supports former President Trump for his military policy in November’s presidential election. Selnick told Fox News Digital, “we’re in a very crucial time both for the military and for the veterans who have left the military. We need a commander in chief that’s going to move things forward and do what’s right, for the veterans, and for the American people.”
US President Joe Biden, center, speaks during a barbecue with active-duty military service members and their families on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, July 4, 2024. Biden’s reelection campaign limped into the US Independence Day holiday, exhausted by a week of the incumbent clawing to maintain his hold on his party’s nomination. (Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Selnick added, “and that’s why we need Donald J. Trump back as commander-in-chief, because under him, we had a thriving military.”
Veterans 4 America First Institute’s mission as listed on their website is “To preserve and expand our nation’s commitment to our Veterans, military, and their families through public education and advocacy.”
The White House has not responded to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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