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Salud: Biden Withdrawal "Purely Political"; House GOP to Blame for Border Mess; Federal Abortion Ban "Extremely Possible"



Joe Biden's unprecedented pullout from his re-election bid was "absolutely" a pure political calculation arising from fears of a Democratic election debacle, not based on any medical or cognitive impediments, Rep. Salud Carbajal said Tuesday.


"He seemed pretty normal to me," Santa Barbara's Man in Washington maintained, asked to describe his personal interactions with Biden.


"I don't think I've seen a significant decline," he said.


Biden, whose withdrawal as Democratic Party nominee barely 100 days before the Nov. 5 election has transformed the nation's political landscape, is scheduled to deliver a nationally televised address on Wednesday to address the circumstances of his decision, which so far he has explained only in a brief written statement.


"Certainly he was hearing from people that they had concerns about his age," Carbajal told Newsmakers. "Certainly they thought the last debate was, as I put it, 'sluggish' and (he) didn't perform as somebody we expect to perform as a candidate for president. And I think he heard a lot from people throughout the country and he decided...to put country over his ego and vanity and make sure we have the best chance to win this election against...Donald Trump."


Q: "So just to be clear, you're saying it was purely a political decision and didn't have anything to do with his cognitive ability?"


A: "Absolutely, absolutely."


Carbajal's comments, on one level, are an unusually blunt acknowledgement of the overt partisan self-interest that led Democratic officeholders to pressure Biden to step away; on another, the statements are pushback against Speaker Mike Johnson and his Republican House majority, which is demanding that Biden resign the presidency, as they accuse Democrats of covering up Biden's diminished physical and mental faculties.


The president, who has not been seen for days in public, has been recovering from Covid, generating allegations that he is too frail and feeble-minded to be trusted with the nuclear codes, amid widespread speculations and wild conspiracy-mongering, up to and including wing nut social media claims that he is dead.


"If Joe Biden is not fit to run for president, he's not fit to serve as president," Johnson declared this week.


In our interview, Carbajal disclosed his participation in behind-the-scenes group calls with Biden, in which Democrats in Washington - some subtly, some not so much -- presented both polling data and on-the-ground reports from their districts that the party faced a calamitous election that could result, not only in loss of the White House but also both houses of Congress.


"There was another meeting that I was part of with the president where (political concern) was expressed in the small group," he said, adding that he and his colleagues told Biden, "the sentiment of what we were hearing throughout the country, my own constituents on the Central Coast...was communicated, and it was done in the context of 'this is what we are hearing."


In the interview, Carbajal also:


  • Defended his avid support for Biden's recent executive order on immigration, which bars migrants who cross the southern border unlawfully from receiving asylum, against sharp criticisms from many fellow Latino officeholders, including California's U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, who said the president's order "undermined American values and abandoned our nation's obligations to provide people fleeing persecution, violence and authoritarianism with an opportunity to seek refuge in the U.S."


  • Admitted that "things are broken" in the nation's immigration policy, but insisted that the problems that emerge from millions of migrants coming to the U.S. illegally are the fault of House Republicans, who refused to consider a Senate-passed, bipartisan immigration bill which Trump told Johnson and other GOP leaders to kill because it would weaken the effectiveness of immigration as an issue to use against Biden.


  • Warned that a national abortion ban is "extremely possible," should Republicans control the government, while pointing to his support for repeal of the 1873 Comstock Act, an antiquated anti-vice measure to ban the mailing of obscene material and articles used to induce abortion, which some on the right have argued could be used to further expand restrictions on abortion rights that have come forth since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago.


  • Waffled when asked if he would debate Thomas Cole, a Santa Barbara Republican political activist, who is on the ballot as his opponent in the November election, saying that, "I will continue to focus on the important work that the residents of the Central Coast sent me here to Washington to do, and that's been my focus right now."


Carbajal declared that he is "thrilled" that Vice President Kamala Harris has taken Biden's spot on the Democratic ticket, and predicted that she would defeat Trump.


"We're going to stop him at the ballot box," he said. "We do not want that type of dictator behavior and undemocratic behavior in the White House.. the future of democracy is at stake."


JR


Check out our conversation with Salud Carbajal via YouTube below or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here. TVSB, Channel 17, airs the show every weeknight at 8 p.m. and at 9 a.m. Saturday and Sunday. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts the program on Monday at 5:30 p.m.







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