Ex-Biden official says Biden should've 'bowed out' after the 'Afghanistan debacle'

Former Department of Justice spokesman Anthony Coley argued during a panel on Monday that Biden should have dropped out of the 2024 race after the Afghanistan withdrawal, long before his infamous debate.

Monday was the one-year anniversary of then-President Biden dropping out of the 2024 presidential election, relinquishing the nomination to then-Vice President Kamala Harris. His son, Hunter Biden, also made headlines recently by offering views ranging from blasting Democratic Party elites to suggesting his father was on Ambien during the debate.

"I know exactly what happened in that debate," Hunter said on the "Channel 5" podcast this past weekend. "He flew around the world, basically, the mileage that he could have flown around the world, three times. He's 81 years old. He's tired as s---. They give him Ambien to be able to sleep. He gets up on the stage. And he looks like he's a deer in the headlights. And it feeds into every f---ing story that anybody wants to tell."

An NBC news panel discussed both the interview and the Democratic Party’s efforts to analyze what went wrong in the election.

BIDEN'S MEDIA BLITZ MET WITH DEMOCRATIC DISDAIN, WISHES HE WOULD 'GO AWAY'

President Biden rests his head in his hands in a moment of frustration during a contentious back and forth with Fox News' Peter Doocy during a press conference following a terrorist attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, that left 13 service members dead on Aug. 26, 2021. (Getty Images)

"A lot of things can be true here," Coley, who is now an NBC News contributor, said. "So he was 81 years old, and he did take two trips back and forth from Europe. I give him that. That’s not why he lost the race, though."

"You can have the best message in the world, you can have the best policy agenda in the world, but at the end of the day, if you don’t have a trusted messenger, somebody that voters think can go the distance, somebody who has stamina, then you’re gonna lose," he continued. "And that’s what happened on the presidential level in 2024."

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Former Department of Justice spokesman Anthony Coley argued during a panel that while he admires former President Biden personally, he should have dropped out after the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

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He then argued that Biden’s fate was sealed long before, and should have taken the hint to leave the race.

"I think what Hunter Biden didn’t say is that people started losing confidence in Joe Biden - whom I love, who I worked for in his administration - right after the Afghanistan debacle," he said. "Do you remember that? It was August of 2022, like his polling never recovered after Afghanistan."

While the midterms that year gave Biden’s team a degree of confidence, he said, the Afghanistan debacle was nonetheless "the moment he really should have bowed out, and we should have had a robust primary process."

Fox News' Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.