The main arguments made against President Biden’s reelection candidature are that his mental capacity is questionable and that his faculties are purportedly in poor shape, as evidenced by the poor performance and result of the CNN-organised debate.
One of former President Trump’s staunchest opponents and a former White House staffer during Trump’s tenure, Alyssa Farah Griffin, during the debate tweeted, “Viewers of all political stripes and the consensus is Biden needs to be replaced,” and the debate is “worse than I believe most people imagined.”
Longtime GOP pollster Frank Luntz wrote on X that his focus group of undecided voters is “surprised and concerned about Biden’s voice,” adding “This doesn’t bode well for questions about his health.”
CNN Chief National Correspondent, John King, said: “Right now as we speak, there is a deep, a wide and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party,” adding that “It involves party strategists, it involves elected officials, and it involves fundraisers. And they’re having conversations about the president’s performance, which they think was dismal . . . some of those conversations include “‘should we go to the White House and ask the president to step aside?’”
The preceding harsh conclusions are only a handful of the criticisms that dominated media headlines during and soon following the June 27 discussion.
Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker of the House of Representatives with significant influence in the DNC, reportedly recently spoke privately but bluntly to President Biden, telling him that polls show he cannot win the presidential race against GOP candidate Mr. Trump and that if President Biden remained in the race, he would destroy Democrats’ chances of regaining control of the House of Representatives.
Senator Chuck Schumer and Congressman Adam Shiff, both firm supporters of President Biden, allegedly joined the rising chorus of Democratic party leaders asking that Biden abandon his re-election bid.
It is a plea and demand that the besieged President Biden has resisted thus far, reminding his opponents that his potential replacement is not performing well in polls as well.
To make matters worse, the president has just succumbed to the COVID-19 virus and he is self-isolating instead of campaigning to save what is left of political life which Mr. Trump is about to bury.
Could that be a final sign, perhaps from divine forces or the so-called hand of God, to listen to the voice of the people, which is thought to be God’s voice? (vox populi vox dei).
The truth is that the Democratic National Convention, DNC, is in no less of a risky situation than when they insist that Joe Biden cannot continue to be their presidential candidate and force him to withdraw, enabling Vice President Kamala Harris to run against the highly popular Republican nominee, Donald Trump, who is currently leading both Biden and Harris in the polls.
Remarkably, the presidential contest is just over 100 days away and the reality check is that opinion polls show that neither of the DNC candidates has an approval rating above 40%.
As of February 12, President Biden’s rating was 38.9%, while Vice President Harris’s rating was 37.5% as per the average of surveys conducted by FiveThirtyEight, a company that uses data and facts to enhance public awareness.
Two years ago, I authored an article titled, ‘The Donald Trump That Africans Do Not Know’. That was after spending about a week getting to know him at his Palm Beach Golf Club and home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. In the story, I made the following observations:
“The first thing that springs forth from the mind of some Africans as soon as the 45th president of the United States of America, USA, Donald J Trump, is mentioned is the impression that he does not like Africans, which is so untrue. And that wrong notion of President Trump disliking Africans stems from the fake news planted by his political opponents in the media and attributed to him such as Africa is a shit hole country.
“Although the statement is flawed in a fundamental way, most people who believe and therefore are not enamored by President Trump have not bothered to critically identify and examine the flaw. That is the reason emotions seem to have clouded their judgment and why they have swallowed the falsehood hook line-and-sinker.
As we all know, Africa is a continent of 54 countries and not just one country.
“So how could President Trump have made the comment attributed to him by his traducers: “Africa is a shit hole country”.
I then further made the following clarifications:
“Since most Africans failed to critically scrutinize the comment because they were eager to believe all the vile things that the so-called Never Trumps had to say, the flaw or illogicality of referring to Africa as a shit hole country, whereas it is indeed a continent, has unfortunately been lost on some of them.
“Those who are hell-bent on generating friction between Africans and the 45th president of the US had done a ‘good’ job as most people of black race have remained trapped in that mind-bending spell which I intend to dispel with this intervention.
“Hopefully, by debunking the myths about how Mr. Trump feels about Africans and what he had done to elevate Black Americans and those residing in the continent during his tenure as president of the US, there would be a rethinking and resetting of Africa/Trump relationship that would position the continent to benefit more from Mr. Trump’s presidency of the US, if he returns to the White House as he plans to in 2024.
“Not only because Nigeria has the largest population of black people on earth or by its being the biggest economy in Africa by GDP, but based on my personal experience as a Nigerian who has met President Trump one-on-one, I would like to use Nigeria as a reference point for assessing Trump-Africa relationship which is currently foggy owing to calculated misinformation.”
As if to confirm my favorable opinion of President Trump and inspire fellow Africans and Black Americans to feel the same way, surveys conducted recently have shown that, between 2016 and 2020, when President Trump was in office, the jobless rate for Black Americans fell dramatically.
The information supported my previous position that, if elected president, he would not emasculate Black people but rather provide them greater chances to realize the mythical American dream.
And it would seem that, two years ago, I was being prescient when I projected that he would win the 2024 presidential election, which he appears to be on course to do and become the 47th president in a little one hundred days.
Naturally, not everyone shared my positive opinion of Mr. Trump, and they retaliated with criticism of my findings, which prompted me to write a follow-up article titled, ‘The Donald Trump Magnus Onyibe Does Not Know’, using their criticisms as the main talking point because the title was not originally mine but was instead created by a critic who forced me to present the following arguments:
“Perhaps, because a stereotypical opinion had long been formed about the 45th President of the US following several years of unmitigated public relations faux pax on the part of Mr. Trump who never bothers to correct some misrepresentation of facts about him, my presentation of the persona of the former president of the US which is inconsistent with the mindset already shaped and propagated by a section of the Western media about Mr. Trump generated a mixed bag of vile and vicious attacks as well as enlightening and encouraging comments. The anti-Trump sentiments expressed against the article and my further comments are the subject of this follow-up opinion piece.
“So, basically, the purpose or raison detre for this further intervention is to shed more light on the areas of contention via the reproduction of the points of view of those that vehemently disagree with me on the need to engage with the 45th president of the US who is poised to be the 47th by contesting for the office next year when the incumbent president, Joe Biden’s first tenure would be over.
“As earlier stated, one particular critic made a case that I do not know Mr. Trump well enough to warrant my trying to market him to blacks in the US and Africans on the continent, simply because they have already formed the opinion that Mr. Trump is a racist and anti-Africa.”
It is my sincere hope that by now the doubters of former President Trump’s divine mission to lead the United States and, in fact, the world, whom the evangelical community in the US saw in 2016, and who threw their weight behind him to win the presidency that year before he lost it in 2020 to President Biden, have been thoroughly weaned of their negative bias.
The fact that Mr. Trump twice cheated death—once by surviving a deadly COVID-19 infection during the pandemic that killed one million Americans and a second time by eluding an assassin’s bullet during a campaign stop in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13.
With President Biden now struck down by COVID-19 infection of which we wish him a speedy recovery, it is incredible that COVID-19 that played a role in his ascendancy to the presidency of the US in 2020 is once more playing a critical role in his political future if it compels him to step down from seeking reelection.
For the time being, except if an apocalypse happens, former President Donald J. Trump appears to be on track to return to the White House after beating President Biden or replacement at the polls on November 5, all things being equal.