Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) became the first Democratic lawmaker holding office to publicly call on President Joe Biden to step down as the party’s presidential nominee following his disastrous debate performance last week against former President Donald Trump.

Doggett, 77, claimed in a statement that the 81-year-old president had “achieved much for our country at home and abroad” before highlighting that many are unhappy with him being at the top of the ticket in the upcoming elections.

“President Biden has continued to run substantially behind Democratic senators in key states and in most polls has trailed Donald Trump,” he said. “I had hoped that the debate would provide some momentum to change that. It did not.”

“Our overriding consideration must be who has the best hope of saving our democracy from an authoritarian takeover,” he continued. “Too much is at stake to risk a Trump victory-too great a risk to assume that what could not be turned around in a year, what was not turned around in the debate, can be turned around now.”

“I represent the heart of a congressional district once represented by Lyndon Johnson. Under very different circumstances, he made the painful decision to withdraw,” he concluded. “President Biden should do the same. While much of his work has been transformational, he pledged to be transitional. He has the opportunity to encourage a new generation of leaders from whom a nominee can be chosen to unite our country through an open, democratic process. … I am hopeful that he will make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw. I respectfully call on him to do so.”

Doggett’s remarks come as leaks have started to emerge from Biden World about the true state of his decline, including a report from veteran investigative journalist Carl Bernstein, who said this week that there have been nearly two dozen recent instances where Biden has performed similarly to how he performed during last week’s debate.

A senior Biden administration official told Politico on Tuesday that people who work for Biden are terrified of him because he is prone to explosive outbursts when he is given information he doesn’t like.

“It’s like, ‘You can’t include that, that will set him off,’ or ‘Put that in, he likes that,’” the official said. “It’s a Rorschach test, not a briefing. Because he is not a pleasant person to be around when he’s being briefed. It’s very difficult, and people are scared s**tless of him.”