Florida Senator Marco Rubio has suggested that Joe Biden is being managed like an "aging monarch" days after the president gave a speech at the White House Correspondents' Dinner and amid calls for him to attend Democratic primary debates.
In a post on Truth Social, Rubio said that Biden is being mainly kept "hidden" as part of damage control, given the president's history of sometimes making gaffes while public speaking.
There have also been calls for Biden to take part in a primary debate against Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with polls suggesting voters do not want Biden to run for president again in 2024, citing his age as a major issue.
"Biden is being managed like an aging monarch," Rubio wrote."To limit the risk of damaging public interactions he is kept mostly hidden inside the palace except for the occasional carefully scripted & tightly controlled public appearance."
Newsweek reached out to the White House via email for comment.
The comments from Rubio arrived after Biden received praise for the jokes he delivered during the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Friday, where the president's targets included Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, and former Fox News Host Tucker Carlson.
The 80-year-old president also made a number of jokes about his own age during the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
Kennedy, one of only two long-shot candidates to have formally challenged Biden for the Democratic candidacy in 2024, has suggested along with several Republican figures that Biden must take part in a Democratic primary debate
However, there is no modern historical precedent for any incumbent party to hold primary debates while their candidate is in office, with former Presidents Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan also not holding such a debate while seeking reelection.
"I think there should be debates, particularly at this time in history, there are so many Americans who are worried about election integrity, who have lost faith in election integrity and feel like the whole system, including the election system, is rigged against them," Kennedy, the son of former Senator Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy, told CNN's Smerconish.
"There were riots on Capitol Hill because of that...So I think the political parties ought to be doing everything they can to convince the American public that we really have a democracy in this country," Kennedy added. "I'm hoping that even if I have 5 percent, it is important to do debates."
Ten percent of likely Democrat voters said they would back Kennedy in the 2024 primary, according to an Echelon Insights survey conducted in late April, with Biden way out ahead with 66 percent.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, domestic policy ... Read more
