NY Times editorial board member defends call for president to drop out: 'Not the same Joe Biden'
New York Times editorial board member Maya Gay defended the board's decision to call on President Biden to step down as the Democratic Party's nominee in an interview Monday.
"We also have to be clear and honest with ourselves about what we saw the other night," Gay said during an appearance on MSNBC. "It is not the same Joe Biden that we saw 4 years ago. I think reasonable people can say we saw this with our eyes."
The editorial board called on Biden to "leave the race," calling him a "shadow of a great public servant" on Friday.
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"We do believe that the stakes are existential, which Joe Biden himself has made clear, and it is, in fact, because the stakes are so high that the board feels it's so important to have the best chance for democracy with the strongest candidate possible," Gay said. "The hope was that that that would be President Joe Biden."
"[Biden] has always known how and when to put country before himself and we believe that in this moment, that public service that he needs to do right now, the best thing he could do would be to step down and to allow a very deep bench of younger talent in the party waiting in the wings to emerge," she continued.
"It was not an easy decision, it was not an easy conversation to have," Gay said.
A number of Democratic politicians, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, have been floated as possible replacements for Biden. Shapiro and Whitmer are 51 and 52 years old, respectively.
"Some of this conversation has been… frustrating," Gay said. "I do find some of it to be ageist, but not everyone ages the same way. There is no shame in being 81 years old. It is actually remarkable. He has been a wonderful president, hugely effective. But it does not appear that he is the same as he was four years ago. That is undeniable."
The New York Times editorial board has company in its rejection of Biden after the debate by other organs of elite opinion, including The Chicago Tribune.
"Biden was an encapsulation of what many Americans have come to know very well as they care for aged parents, partners, friends, grandparents and colleagues: a man now struggling to maintain a line of thought and keep track of complex facts, a man who gets flustered under deadline pressure, a man who has become vulnerable and yet, at the same time, far less self-aware," the editorial board of The Tribune wrote.
The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Fox News' Alba Cuebas-Fantauzzi contributed to this report.