Political commentators responded to President Biden’s speech being delayed past primetime on Monday, with some observers remarking the scheduling issues were disrespectful to the president who had already been forced off the 2024 ticket.
Biden, originally scheduled to speak at 10:30 p.m. (ET), started his speech roughly an hour behind schedule and finished his remarks after midnight.
“I’m tapping out – I can’t stay up this late, we all have lives and kids,” former “View” co-host Meghan McCain wrote on X Monday. “God speed to our 81 year old President getting through the speech at this hour. Whatever producers did this to him and let it go over this long at this hour is an a—— and it is disrespectful to Biden.”
“Democrats kicked Joe Biden out of the presidential race and now they aren’t even going to let him speak until after 11 pm eastern on the first night of the convention,” OutKick founder Clay Travis wrote before Biden’s speech. “Diabolical. They are nasty and play to win.”
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“Fitting that the DNC pushed Biden out of Primetime considering they pushed him out of the race too,” GOP staffer Abigail Jackson wrote on Monday.
Biden insisted for weeks after his disastrous June debate performance that he would not leave the race, but intense pressure from figures like Nancy Pelosi over concerns he’d lose to former President Trump eventually forced his hand. He dropped out on July 21 and endorsed Kamala Harris, who quickly clinched the nomination and has reinvigorated Democrats.
Some commentators called attention to the possible political considerations behind pushing Biden’s speech out of primetime.
“Yeah, it’s disrespectful, but why would Democrats want to feature Joe Biden in primetime if they don’t have to?” National Review’s Rich Lowry wrote. “Harris needs distance from him, not to embrace him. Besides, once you’ve taken the nomination from him what’s pushing his speech out of prime time?”
“This is truly the ultimate humiliation ritual,” one conservative account added, noting Biden was “strong armed” off the ballot.
Pollster Nate SIlver said that the scheduling delays for Biden’s speech were by design.
“The media is very East Coast focused though, you’ve gotta be pretty naive to think the prolonged DNC tonight is for any reason other than diminishing Biden’s visibility,” Silver wrote.
Former CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller said that Biden was “booted.”
“They took the nomination away from him and now booted him out of prime time,” Knoller wrote.
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The White House did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. A spokesperson for the DNC said excessive applause led to the delays in Monday’s program, which had been touted by the liberal media as a celebration of the president that party bosses had forced out of the race.
“Because of the raucous applause interrupting speaker after speaker, we ultimately skipped elements of our program to ensure we could get to President Biden as quickly as possible so that he could speak directly to the American people,” the DNC told Fox News Digital. “We are proud of the electric atmosphere in our convention hall and proud that our convention is showcasing the broad and diverse coalition behind the Harris-Walz ticket throughout the week on and off the stage.”
Fox News’ Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.
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