WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senator Mark Warner is attempting to assemble a group of Democratic senators to ask Joe Biden to exit the presidential race after last week’s debate performance, the Washington Post reported on Friday, citing two unidentified people with knowledge of the effort.
Warner, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, earlier this week was contacting Democratic senators about a possible meeting on Monday to discuss Biden’s campaign, a source familiar told Reuters on Friday.
Biden has been scrambling to defuse a political crisis over his shaky debate performance and has maintained thus far that he is staying in the race.
Warner has not so far commented publicly on Biden’s debate performance against Republican rival and former President Donald Trump. No sitting Democratic senator has publicly called for Biden to step aside.
A spokesperson for Warner cited in the Washington Post neither confirmed nor denied the senator’s attempts.
“Like many other people in Washington and across the country, Senator Warner believes these are critical days for the president’s campaign, and he has made that clear to the White House,” the spokesperson from his office was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan and Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Caitlin Webber)
