Then-President Joe Biden speaks at the State Department, during the closing days of his presidency on Jan. 13, 2025. (AP)
He also noted that Democrats "all bear responsibility" for President Donald Trump's White House victory last November.
However, longtime Democratic Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, a longtime Biden ally and confidant, said on the Sunday talk shows that he never doubted the then-president's ability to lead the nation.
"I never saw anything that allowed me to think that Joe Biden was not able to do the job," Clyburn argued in an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union."
Top Democrats like Murphy and Clyburn are facing a litmus test over Biden's mental acuity during his final years in office and whether Democrats should have been more strident earlier in the 2024 election cycle in calling on Biden to abandon his bid for a second term in the White House.
The grilling comes as Biden's condition is once again making headlines, courtesy of excerpts from a new book being released this week, "Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again," which offers claims of a White House cover-up of the then-president's apparent cognitive decline.
BIDEN STRUGGLES WITH WORDS, KEY MEMORIES IN LEAKED AUDIO FROM SPECIAL COUNSEL HUR INTERVIEW
Additionally, last week's leaked audio of Biden’s 2023 interview with special counsel Robert Hur, in which the then-president appears to suffer memory lapses, is also fueling the conversation.
Hur, who investigated whether Biden years earlier had improperly stored classified documents, made major headlines early last year when he decided not to charge Biden but described the then-president as an "elderly man with a poor memory."
Then-President Joe Biden dropped his re-election bid less than a month after a disastrous debate performance against then-former President Donald Trump in Atlanta on June 27, 2024. (Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images)
He was replaced at the top of the ticket by then-Vice President Kamala Harris, who ended up losing November's presidential election to Trump. Democrats also suffered down ballot, losing control of the Senate and failing to win back the House majority from the Republicans.
During an appearance on ABC's "The View" two weeks ago, Biden pushed back against accusations that he had suffered significant cognitive decline during the final year of his presidency.
Rep. Ro Khanna of California was a leading supporter and surrogate on the campaign trail for Biden during the 2024 election cycle. After last June’s debate, as a trickle of Democrats urging Biden to step aside turned into a steady stream, Khanna likened the embattled president to Rocky Balboa—the underdog boxer of big-screen legend.
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"To rebuild trust, Democrats must be honest. In light of the facts that have come out, Joe Biden should not have run for reelection, and we should have had an open primary," Khanna wrote in a social media post.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer stands for a Fox News Digital interview, on July 25, 2024 in Durham, New Hampshire. (Fox News - Paul Steinhauser)
However, she added that "it does make me question a lot of the things I thought I knew over the course of the last year and a half."
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While the potential contenders are answering questions concerning Biden in different ways, there is one consensus.
"We're not in a position to wallow in hindsight. We've got to get ready for some fundamental tests of the future of this country and this party," Buttigieg noted.
Paul Steinhauser is a politics reporter based in the swing state of New Hampshire. He covers the campaign trail from coast to coast."
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dems-face-litmus-test-over-bidens-cognitive-abilities