Biden dropping out of 2024 race ‘wouldn’t be a total shock’: Franklin Foer

“It wouldn’t be a total shock” if President Biden drops out of the 2024 presidential race, according to a Biden biographer who had “unparalleled access’’ to the president’s “tight inner circle’’ for his new book.

Franklin Foer, the well-connected author of “The Last Politican,” said Sunday he wouldn’t rule out the 80-year-old commander in chief withdrawing from seeking a second term — because of the president’s strong belief in fate. 

“I would say it would, it would be a surprise to me. But it wouldn’t be a total surprise. … It wouldn’t be a total shock,” Foer told “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd when asked about the prospects of Biden removing himself from the race by the end of the year.

“When he talks about his life, he uses this word, fate, constantly,” Foer explained.

“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, the oldest president in US history, would be 86 by the end of his second term if he were to win re-election. 

In private, Biden “would occasionally admit that he felt tired,” during his first two years as president, according to an excerpt from Foer’s book, which also notes that the commander in chief’s “public persona reflected physical decline and time’s dulling of mental faculties that no pill or exercise regime can resist. 

“It doesn’t take Bob Woodward to understand that Joe Biden is old,” Foer told Todd, referring to the Washington Post reporter who broke the Watergate scandal.

“I’m not a gerontologist, and I can’t predict how the next couple of years will age Joe Biden,” Foer said.

Biden formally announced his bid for re-election in April, asking voters to give him another four years as president to help him “finish the job” despite mounting concerns over his advanced age. 

Two-thirds of Democrats and 73% of registered voters believe Biden is too old to be seeking re-election, according to a Wall Street Journal poll released Monday, and just 36% of the survey’s 1,500 respondents say they believe the president is mentally fit for office. 

In public, Biden has acknowledged that questions about his age are a “legitimate concern” for voters.

But in private, the oldest-ever commander in chief has “vented to allies” about how much the topic is discussed in the media, according to Politico.

“You think I don’t know how f–king old I am?” an exasperated Biden ranted to one of his acquaintances last year, according to the outlet.