Biden says he nearly ‘fell asleep’ at debate, blames foreign travel amid growing calls to step aside

Joe Biden has claimed foreign travel left him so tuckered out that he nearly “fell asleep” during his disastrous debate performance last week.

Joe Biden has offered a bizarre new excuse for last week’s disastrous debate performance that has sparked growing calls for the US President to step aside to prevent a looming Donald Trump victory.

Mr Biden on Tuesday claimed foreign travel left him so tuckered out that he nearly “fell asleep” during Thursday’s debate — even though he had 13 days to recover from his most recent trip abroad, including a full week at Camp David with afternoon naps.

The 81-year-old commander-in-chief provided the new excuse as he faces mounting calls from fellow Democrats to make way for a new presidential nominee ahead of the November 5 election.

“I decided to travel around the world a couple of times … shortly before the debate,” Mr Biden told Democratic donors in McLean, Virginia.

“It wasn’t very smart [to be] travelling around the world a couple times. I didn’t listen to my staff … and then I almost fell asleep on stage.”

Joe Biden is facing calls to step aside. Picture: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images/AFP

The comments came after a number of new claims about the President’s alleged cognitive decline. Speaking to CNN, legendary journalist Carl Bernstein said he was told of one incident when President Biden was at a fundraiser where he became “stiff”, almost like “rigor mortis”, and a chair had to be brought out for him to continue the event.

Questions have swirled about Mr Biden’s mental acuity for months but have been dismissed by the White House.

Mr Biden blamed foreign travel for the debate performance despite making just two brief recent foreign trips — travelling on June 5-9 to France to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day and on June 12-14 to the annual G7 summit in Italy — ahead of the June 27 CNN debate against former President Trump.

During the Italy trip, Mr Biden raised eyebrows after appearing to wander off during a skydiving demonstration in front of other world leaders, with the host nation’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni pressed into action to pull him back toward the group.

That came after another unusual incident in France, when at one point during the June 6 ceremony he awkwardly fumbled for his seat on stage, apparently not realising that his fellow dignitaries, including French President Emmanuel Macron, had remained standing.

The President’s debate performance has alarmed Democrats. Picture: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP

The President spent the first full day of his French trip at his hotel without public events.

Mr Biden was at his Rehoboth Beach getaway June 18-20 before travelling to Camp David in western Maryland, where he remained out of public view for the week before the debate.

Debate prep sessions “never started before 11am and Mr. Biden was given time for an afternoon nap each day”, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

Mr Biden’s catastrophic debate performance — which included a soft, raspy voice and unintelligible phrases such as “we finally beat Medicare” — was initially suggested by aides to be attributable at least in part to a cold.

Democratic Representative Lloyd Doggett of Texas on Tuesday became the first sitting member of Congress from Mr Biden’s party to call for him to step aside — writing that Mr Biden should follow the example of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who chose not to seek re-election in 1968.

Another Democrat, Representative Jared Golden of Maine, wrote in an op-ed for the Bangor Daily News on Tuesday that he also had no confidence in Mr Biden.

“Biden’s poor performance in the debate was not a surprise,” Mr Golden wrote. “It also didn’t rattle me as it has others, because the outcome of this election has been clear to me for months: While I don’t plan to vote for him, Donald Trump is going to win. And I’m OK with that.”

But Mr Biden seems determined to go head to head with his rival at the polls. The White House has acknowledged it was a “bad debate” but has insisted he shouldn’t be judged on one performance.

Mr Biden says he ‘nearly fell asleep’. Picture: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images/AFP

Bernstein, who helped break the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon in the 1970s, said the Democrats had seen multiple occasions that were of concern.

“These are people, several of them who are very close to President Biden, who loved him, have supported him, and among them are some people who would raise a lot of money for him,” he told CNN.

“They are adamant that what we saw the other night is not a one-off, that there have been 15, 20 occasions in the last year and a half when the president has appeared somewhat as he did in that horror show that we witnessed.”

He added, “I’ve talked to people in the last year [who have said] we have a problem. There have been numerous instances where the President has lost his train of thought [and] can’t pick it up again.”

But the journalist was adamant that at other times Mr Biden was “as sharp as can be”.

“There is no question about how sharp Joe Biden is in his national security meetings,” he said.

“He has an absolute command of the facts as sharp as can be. You see the evidence of his being the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate, of his work as Vice President on Foreign Relations.”

Post-debate internal Democratic polling published on Tuesday by Puck News shows that Mr Trump, 78, now leads in states that overwhelmingly supported Mr Biden in 2020, including New Hampshire, New Mexico and Virginia.

A CBS News poll released on Monday found that 45 per cent of Democrats want Biden to step aside — a position also advocated Friday by The New York Times editorial board.

— with NY Post

Originally published as Biden says he nearly ‘fell asleep’ at debate, blames foreign travel amid growing calls to step aside