Exclusive — Former Jill Biden Spokesman: Call for Biden to Step Aside Must Come from Congressional Leadership

Michael LaRosa, First Lady Jill Biden’s former spokesman, told Breitbart News Saturday that a conversation with President Joe Biden about stepping aside for another Democrat candidate would likely have to come from Congressional leadership.

LaRosa, who served as Jill Biden’s spokesman in the Biden White House, joined Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle on the program just days after the president’s debate performance ignited mass panic about his reelection prospects within the Democrat Party.

During the interview, Boyle asked LaRosa about Jill Biden’s role as the Democrat Party and nation move forward through uncharted territory in the aftermath of the debate.

LaRosa, who backs Biden and noted he never supported the uncommitted movement or a Democrat primary challenger to the president, emphasized that the Bidens are supportive of one another when pursuing aspirations, whether it be the president’s support of the first lady’s academic pursuits in the past or her backing his political goals. In other words, “when the family comes to a decision, they’re all in,” according to LaRosa.

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“She would never be comfortable with a weighty decision like saying, ‘Joe, you have to, you know, step aside,’” LaRosa told Boyle, insisting it would “absolutely not” happen.

“Something like that, and I think it’s important for your audience to know, like, in both parties, something like that would probably have to come from, like, the leadership in Congress,” he said, indirectly referencing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).

“And they have to say, like, ‘We have no support at the convention for you,’ or, ‘You’re dragging down the rest of the party,'” he added.

One key barometer to watch on this front is the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race between Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) and Republican businessman Dave McCormick. If Casey’s numbers begin to suffer because Biden is at the top of the ticket, it could trigger a reaction from Schumer.

“IF (big IF) Bob Casey’s numbers in my home state of Pennsylvania start to slip or erode, they will send shockwaves to Schumer, who will react with lightening [sic] speed!” LaRosa wrote in a post on X shortly after he and Boyle’s conversation.

“If it even slightly appears that Casey could be in peril, we will see a *reaction* from this master of Senate strategy, candidate recruitment, incumbent protection, and fundraising that may force him to recalculate his approach to the ‘panic’ inside the party,” he added.

The former spokesman for the first lady noted that the three-term senator regularly “outperforms the top of the ticket,” meaning a slip in number there would be a signal Biden is imperiling down-ballot Democrats.

However, Casey was already one of the most vulnerable Democrats up for reelection in the 2024 cycle before Biden’s shaky debate performance, and McCormick wasted no time in working to tie his opponent to the president.

“Bob Casey has said over and over that his ‘close friend’ Joe Biden, with whom he votes 98% of the time, is fit to be president,” McCormick tweeted Friday. “What we all saw last night proves Casey is lying.”

While LaRosa supports Biden, he argued that the campaign should have put Biden in the public eye more over recent months rather than limiting his public engagement. Although this would have led to more public mistakes, it would have been much easier for the American public to chalk Thursday up to merely a “bad night” for Biden, in LaRosa’s view.

“And I think, Matt, had they been — and I said this actually right around the time that Hur Report came out in February, I said this quite a bit — that the more he is out there, yes, the more mistakes he’ll make, but the more conditioned over time people will be to see him,” LaRosa said.

“They’ll be seeing him with a back and forth, mixing it up with reporters, and they’ll see him engaging, and they’ll see him with energy, and then, nights like last night, it would actually be believable that he just had one bad night,” he added. “But, as you know, the track record, they do like to limit his engagement.”

He concurred with Boyle that the campaign has a “credibility crisis, 1,000 percent.”