Political commentators responded to the delay of President Biden’s speech beyond prime time on Monday, with some observers commenting that the scheduling issues were disrespectful to the president, who had already been ousted from the 2024 ticket.
Biden, originally scheduled to speak at 10:30 p.m. (ET), began his speech about an hour later than planned and finished his remarks after midnight.
“I'm getting tired, I can't stay up this late, we all have lives and kids,” former “View” co-host Meghan McCain wrote on X on Monday. “May God speed up our 81 year old president's speech to this hour. The producers who did this to him and allowed it to go on this long at this hour are stupid and disrespectful to Biden.”
“Democrats kicked Joe Biden out of the presidential race and now they're not even going to let him speak until after 11pm ET on the first night of the convention,” OutKick founder Clay Travis wrote ahead of Biden's speech. “It's diabolical. They're nasty and they're playing to win.”
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Political commentators responded to the delay of President Biden's speech beyond prime time, with some observers commenting that the scheduling issues were disrespectful to the president. (Reuters/Brendan McDermid)
“It's fitting that the DNC kicked Biden out of Primetime considering they also kicked him out of the race,” Republican staffer Abigail Jackson wrote Monday.
Biden insisted for weeks after his disastrous June debate performance that he would not drop out of the race, but intense pressure from figures like Nancy Pelosi over concerns he would lose to former President Trump eventually forced him to do so. He dropped out on July 21 and endorsed Kamala Harris, who quickly secured the nomination and reinvigorated the Democrats.
Some commentators drew attention to possible political considerations behind the decision to pull Biden's speech from prime time.
“Yes, it's disrespectful, but why would Democrats want to feature Joe Biden in prime time if they don't have to?” wrote National Review's Rich Lowry. “Harris needs to distance herself from him, not embrace him. Besides, with the nomination stripped from her, what's keeping her speech from prime time?”
“This is truly the ultimate humiliation ritual,” added one conservative account, noting that Biden was “forced” to withdraw from the ticket.
Pollster Nate Silver said the delays in scheduling Biden's speech were intentional.
“The media is very focused on the East Coast, but you'd have to be pretty naive to think that tonight's extended Democratic National Convention has any purpose other than to diminish Biden's visibility,” Silver wrote.
Former CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller said Biden was “fired.”
“He was stripped of his nomination and now he's been banned from prime time,” Knoller wrote.
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The White House did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. A DNC spokesperson said excessive applause led to delays to Monday’s program, which had been touted by liberal media as a celebration of the president who had been forced out of the race by party bosses.
“Due to the raucous applause that interrupted speaker after speaker, we ended up skipping some elements of our program to ensure we could speak to President Biden as quickly as possible so he could speak directly to the American people,” the DNC told Fox News Digital. “We are proud of the electric atmosphere on our convention hall and proud that our convention is showcasing the broad and diverse coalition behind the Harris-Walz ticket all week on and off the stage.”
Fox News' Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.
