Haley urges Trump to prepare for younger rival after Biden debate chaos

Former GOP presidential primary candidate Nikki Haley urged former President Trump in a Wall Street Journal article published Saturday to get ready to face a younger rival following a problematic debate performance from President Biden.

“They are going to be smart about it: they’re going to bring somebody younger, they’re going to bring somebody vibrant, they’re going to bring somebody tested,” Haley said in the Journal article. “This is a time for Republicans to prepare and get ready for what’s to come because there is no way that there will be a surviving Democratic Party if they allow Joe Biden to continue to be the candidate.”

During the debate, Biden had a raspy voice and stumbled over his words, sparking widespread fears amongst those in his party and questions about if he should stay at the top of the Democratic ticket. Even staunch Democrats, including those who had worked with former President Obama, expressed their fears about how the debate went.

“Obviously that debate was a f‑‑‑ing disaster,” former Obama administration speechwriter and “Pod Save America” co-host Jon Favreau posted Friday morning on the social platform X. “We have to beat Donald Trump. We have to have a nominee who can do that.”

Biden and those around him have pushed back against him stepping down from his role as the presumptive Democratic nominee.

“Of course he’s not dropping out,” Biden campaign spokesperson Seth Schuster said to The Hill in the wake of the debate performance.

Haley said she watched Thursday’s debate in her home state of South Carolina alongside her husband and friends, rapidly coming to the conclusion that Biden was facing political headwinds, according to the Journal.

“It was shocking, I think, for a lot of people,” the former United Nations ambassador said, according to the Journal. “What we saw was that Trump was strong, but I don’t even think that mattered because Biden was so amazingly unfit. The way he lost his train of thought, the way he couldn’t grasp topics of what he needed to talk about.”

The Hill has reached out to the Biden and Trump campaigns.