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Senior advisors to then-President Joe Biden reportedly urged him to hold a debate against President Donald Trump as early as possible in an attempt to highlight Biden’s “leadership” and Trump’s “weakness,” according to a new book.
The book, “2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America,” is set for release Tuesday and claims that Biden’s team dismissed concerns about his age during the 2024 election cycle.
The book, authored by Josh Dawsey of the Wall Street Journal, Tyler Pager of the New York Times and Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post, says Biden senior advisors wrote up a memo advocating an initial spring debate, followed by a potential second one in early September after Labor Day.
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This strategy would allow Biden to take on Trump before early voting in battleground states kicked off, set the terms of the debate most advantageous for Biden and highlight Biden’s “leadership” in contrast to Trump’s, according to a memo on the matter.
“By holding the first debate in the spring, YOU will be able to reach the widest audience possible, before we are deep in the summer months with the conventions, Olympics and family vacations taking precedence,” Biden’s senior advisors reportedly wrote in an April 15, 2024, memo, published by Politico Playbook. “In addition, the earlier YOU are able to debate the better, so that the American people can see YOU standing next to Trump and showing the strength of YOUR leadership, compared to Trump’s weakness and chaos.”
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Even so, the book reports that some Biden aides were hesitant about an early debate, with some even advocating that Biden shouldn’t debate Trump at all. Specifically, the book cites a Biden donor who pressed the White House in May 2024 to find a reason to pull Biden from the debates, after the donor reported being “alarmed” by Biden’s behavior at a Chicago fundraiser.
Meanwhile, the Trump White House said the debate backfired on Biden, and instead, shed light on Biden’s own weaknesses.
“The only highlight from the debate was Joe Biden’s inability (to) form a complete sentence,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a Monday statement to Fox News Digital. “American voters got a firsthand look at Biden’s weakness, his campaign in chaos, and what it looks like when real leader is missing from the White House.”
“Unfortunately for the Democrats, no adviser or so-called ‘strategic’ move could save their incompetent candidates and terrible policies from President Trump’s historic, landslide victory,” Rogers said.
A spokesperson for Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
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Biden and Trump ultimately did face off in a debate on June 27, 2024 – an event that prompted Biden to exit the election in July 2024 and led to Vice President Kamala Harris to take on Trump in November 2024.
“2024” is one of several books that have been released in 2025 detailing Biden’s mental deterioration while in office and how Trump won the election. Another example is the book “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” released May 20.
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