Biden biographer says it ‘wouldn’t be a total shock’ if president drops out of 2024 race

A biographer of President Biden said that while it would be a surprise, it “wouldn’t be a total shock” if the president drops out of the 2024 race by the end of the calendar year.

NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” asked biographer Franklin Foer, whose book about Biden’s first two years in office will be released this week, how surprised he would be if Biden decided to not pursue a second term in office.

“I would say it would, it would be a surprise to me. But it wouldn’t be a total surprise,” Foer said, adding that “it wouldn’t be a total shock.”

“When he talks about his life, he uses this word, fate, constantly,” he said. “Joe Biden is a very religious guy, and fate is a word loaded with religious meaning. And he always talks about, ‘He can’t say where fate goes.’ And so I always, when I hear that, to me, it’s the ellipses in the sentence when he’s talking about his own future.”

Biden announced his reelection campaign earlier this year and has not signaled that he was considering dropping out of the race. The 80-year-old has faced questions from inside and outside his party about concerns regarding his age as the 2024 election approaches.

Foer said his book, titled “The Last Politician,” describes how Biden was “underestimated” and how he used that to his advantage. He also said it delves into Biden’s career in policymaking and what techniques he uses to get things done.

“It doesn’t take Bob Woodward to understand that Joe Biden is old, and I’m not a gerontologist and I can’t predict how the next couple of years will age Joe Biden,” he said. “I think what my book does is shows that he is somebody who, for whom — he’s buried in details. He’s somebody who is very technocratic, really obsessed with the intricacies of policy. He’s a very activist president in that he micromanages a lot of the dealings in the White House”