(PM.) A new Substack out from Seymour Hersch indicates that former President Barack Obama and VP Kamala Harris, now presumptive Democrat nominee for president, threatened sitting President Joe Biden with the potential invocation of the 25th Amendment if he didn’t drop out the presidential race and cede that spot to the veep.
This would mean that not only did they force Biden out of the race, but that the Democrats know full well that Biden isn’t fit to serve out the rest of his term, but are comfortable letting him continued as a figure head if it serves their efforts to retain power for the party.
Biden engaged in a debate with former President and GOP nominee for president Donald Trump on June 27. It was so bad that almost instantly Democrat leaders and pundits were looking for a way to get Biden off the ticket. They could see that there was very little chance that Biden, in his diminished state, coudl beat Trump at the ballot box.
The party elite were aghast and worked hard both in public and private to oust Biden. While much of that played out in leaked rumor, speculation, it turns out, per Hersch, that what was going on behind the scenes was a kind of coup, complete with threats from the Obama Kamala team.
“By Saturday, July 20,” Hersch writes, “former President Barack Obama was deeply involved, and there was talk that he would place a call to Biden. It was not clear whether Biden had been examined or just what happened to him in Las Vegas. ‘The Big Three,’ the official said, referring to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, continued to be directly involved.
‘On Sunday morning,’ the official told me, with the approval of Pelosi and Schumer, ‘Obama called Biden after breakfast and said, ‘Here’s the deal. We have Kamala’s approval to invoke the 25th Amendment.’ The amendment provides that when the president is determined by the vice president and others to be unfit to carry out the powers and duties of his office, the vice president shall assume those duties.”
“‘It was clear at this point,’ the official said,” per Hersch, “‘that she would get the nod’—that is, the support to run for the presidency in the November election. ‘But Obama also made it clear,’ the official said, ‘that he was not going to immediately endorse her. But the group had decided that her work as a prosecutor would help her deal with Trump in a debate.'”
