When historians assess Joe Biden’s tenure in the Oval Office, it is likely they will point to the week that began on Sunday, Sept. 10, as having six of the most challenging days of his presidency, culminating in the federal indictment of first son Hunter Biden on three gun-related felony charges.
Consider the events of each of those six days:
Sunday—President Biden woke up to this headline in David Ignatius’s column in the Washington Post: “President Biden Should Not Run Again in 2024.” Mr. Ignatius is one of the president’s favorite journalists, one of the few he has consistently read throughout his five decades as a senator, vice president, and the nation’s chief executive.
Mr. Ignatius, who is tightly sourced in the intelligence community and is a leading influencer of Democratic progressive thought, cited a survey that found 69 percent of Democrats think President Biden, 80, is too old to be president for a second term. The column said plainly what many prominent Democrats have kept to themselves.
“Right now, there’s no clear alternative to Biden—no screamingly obvious replacement waiting in the wings. That might be the decider for Biden, that there’s seemingly nobody else. But maybe he will trust in democracy to discover new leadership, ‘in the arena,'” Mr. Ignatius writes.
Monday–On the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans in 2001, President Biden became the first president not to commemorate those losses by attending memorial services at the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, the crash site of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania, or at the White House.
On the last leg of his return journey from Vietnam, the president instead chose to deliver remarks at a U.S. military base near Anchorage, Alaska, while Vice President Kamala Harris attended the 9/11 ceremony in New York. The Vietnam stop had been scheduled in advance of the 9/11 memorials, the administration said.
