Jon Karl, known for hysterical anti-Trump editorials when hosting ABC This Week, opened today’s broadcast with a similar yet slightly more muted response to President Joe Biden’s catastrophic performance in the first presidential debate of 2024.

Watch as Karl opens with a recap of the debate fallout, and with a warning for Biden that there’s some time left to turn things around, but not much:

ABC's Jon Karl to open @ThisWeekABC: Biden doesn't have a lot of time left to "revive his campaign" pic.twitter.com/o4vplvZdXE

— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) June 30, 2024

ABC THIS WEEK

6/30/24

9:01 AM

JON KARL: Good morning. Welcome to This Week. Even before the debate, there was a sense of dread among many Democrats, a fear that the campaign was heading towards something they consider unthinkable, a Donald Trump victory in November. President Biden needed a strong debate to show that he has the physical and mental ability to take on and defeat Donald Trump. That's why he spent nearly a week at Camp David with an army of advisers preparing for a debate with rules and a format that his advisers designed. Few prominent Democrats are even pretending he did what he needed to do on that debate stage. Just listen to how former Democratic senator Claire McCaskill put it on MSNBC shortly after the debate ended.

CLAIRE MCCASKILL: Joe Biden had one thing he had to do tonight, and he didn't do it. He had one thing he had to accomplish, and that was reassure America that he was up to the job at his age, and he failed at that tonight.

KARL: A chorus of Biden allies outside of the party leadership, liberal commentators, party strategists, and former elected officials, are now publicly urging him to step aside and allow the party to choose a different nominee at the Democratic convention in August. Privately, some elected democratic officials are saying essentially the same thing. Is it too late to go in another direction? Technically no. Democrats haven't formally nominated anybody yet. But as a practical matter, the only way for the convention to choose a different candidate would be for Biden to declare he has decided not to run and to release his delegates to vote for someone else. Will that happen? Well, there is absolutely no indication that Biden is even considering dropping out or that anybody in his inner circle is suggesting he should, but nobody knows better than Joe Biden how high the stakes are in this election. And he still has time, although not much, to revive his campaign and reassure voters that he still has what it takes.

It’s the high stakes, you see, that compel Biden to make a decision on whether or not to drop out of the race. That alone should’ve drawn out a more hysterical tone out of Karl, for consistency’s sake. That was certainly the case when he emphatically declared that “this is the most important election of our time”:

 

 

ANNOUNCER: From ABC News it’s This Week. Here now, Jonathan Karl.

JON KARL: Good morning. Welcome to This Week. For as long as I've covered politics, politicians have said, “this will be the most important election of our lifetimes.” They said that, no matter how high or low the stakes actually were. Election Day 2024 is exactly six months from today and this time, the divisions in our country are so vast and the choice so stark there's little doubt this really is the most important election of our time. No more crying wolf. This. Is it.

This. Is. It. 

The stakes are so high that this is the most important election of our lifetimes and yet Biden has time to “revive his campaign”. Make it make sense.

Most notably, Karl makes no mention of whether Biden should remain in office right now. If Biden is this weak and enfeebled, and unable to perform in a debate that, as Karl notes, was instigated by Biden, “designed” according to Biden’s rules and on a network of Biden’s choosing, then how can he remain in office? Doesn't he also need to "revive" his presidency?

Furthermore, how does it protect our democracy to have a president so enfeebled and compromised in the face of multiple wars, the economy, and everything else going on? Karl doesn’t say. Karl’s just going to grind ahead and continue to do his level best to firefight Biden out of this. 

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