Can this election cycle get any more chaotic?
Aliens could literally land on earth at this moment, one social media user wrote, and it might not be enough to keep up with all the events of the presidential election.
Meghan McCain, daughter of the late presidential candidate and Arizona Sen. John McCain, tweeted, “This is the most insane, intense, dramatic election cycle of my life and my Dad picked Sarah Palin as his VP without the campaign knowing her teenage daughter was pregnant…”
Donald Trump spoke Thursday night to close out the Republican National Convention. It was his first speech since the assassination attempt on his life last weekend in Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden is back home in Delaware, trying to fight off the effects of COVID-19, as well as the growing chorus of critics calling for him to step down from the 2024 race.
Stories that Biden could or should drop out of the race dominate media coverage as we close this remarkable week.
In some cases, the sources quoted are a little vague, which makes it difficult to determine just what to make of this story.
For example, NBC News used this quote to talk about Biden’s presidential future: “We’re close to the end.” Who said that? Well, it was “a person close to Biden.”
The Washington Post reports that former President Barack Obama “has been deeply engaged in conversations about the future of Biden’s campaign, taking calls from many anxious Democrats.” And how does the Post know this? Its sources were “people with knowledge of the calls, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.”
Or how about this eyebrow-raising quote from Politico: “This is an absolute debacle. Only amateurs see a path. The red is mushrooming all across the map.”
That comes from “one senior Democratic official who is close to congressional leadership.”
A headline on The New York Times website said, “People Close to Biden Say He Appears to Accept He May Have to Leave the Race.”
Look, this is a sensitive story, I realize that. It’s hard for people close to the Biden administration to go on the record. And I’m not questioning if the quotes and sources are real. I’m also not finger-pointing at just the news outlets above. Pretty much every news organization covering this story is relying on unnamed sources.
But in this frenzied race to find out the latest with Biden, you can’t help but ask what makes an anonymous source a big enough deal to quote in a story of this magnitude? Just how close do they have to be to the president? Just how many degrees of separation from the president are too many degrees to not quote?
While we ponder all that, it does appear to be true that storm clouds are getting darker around Biden’s candidacy.
On Thursday’s “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, co-host Joe Scarborough, an ally of Biden, seemed to push those close to Biden to convince the president to leave the race.
Scarborough said, “It’s really incumbent on people that are around Joe Biden to step up at this point and help the president, and help the man they love, and do the right thing. This is not going to end well if it continues to drag out. Look at the events of yesterday, the events of the last three weeks. … The anger that I hear is not at Joe Biden. The anger I hear are the people who are keeping him in a bubble.”
Several top Democrats (and more every day) are calling on Biden to step away, and there are reports that Biden is not as defiant as he once was.
NBC News’ Chuck Todd gave a to-the-point commentary, starting with, “Now, it's impossible for Biden to stay in even if he wants to stay in because there are too many Democrats on the record saying he needs to get out.”
