Former Biden officials unsure they'd put president in room with foreign adversary: NY Times reporter

Former government officials said they were unsure if they would put President Biden in a meeting room with a foreign adversary following last week's disastrous debate performance, according to a reporter.

During a roundtable discussion on "Inside Politics with Dana Bash," New York Times White House correspondent Zolan Kanno-Youngs said European officials who recently met with Biden made remarks about his "decline."

Kanno-Youngs also said officials would crowd around Biden when he entered a room to prevent him from trailing off.

"We talked to, as well, officials who said, look, if I was still working for President Biden and the U.S. government, they weren't sure if they would put him in a meeting with a foreign adversary," he said.

"Oh my God," Bash said quietly as Kanno-Youngs finished his sentence.

Biden, the oldest president in the nation's history at age 81, is facing the roughest stretch of his bid for a second term in the White House.

His halting delivery and stumbling answers during the CNN Presidential Debate last Thursday sparked widespread panic in the Democratic Party and spurred calls from political pundits, editorial writers and party donors for Biden to step aside as the party's 2024 standard-bearer.

Biden recently blamed a recent series of trips to Europe for his rocky performance at the presidential debate, telling an audience at a campaign fundraiser in Virginia last night that he "wasn’t very smart" for "traveling around the world a couple times" beforehand. The president, however, spent two days in Delaware and six in Camp David between the back-to-back travel and the debate.

Biden spoke as pressure remains high Wednesday morning for the president to withdraw his re-election bid and let another Democrat pursue the nomination. 

"I decided to travel around the world a couple of times … shortly before the debate … I didn’t listen to my staff … and then I almost fell asleep on stage," Biden said during the event Tuesday night in McLean, according to a print pool report. 

A USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll released this week found that more than four in 10 Democrats said the Democratic Party should intervene and replace Biden as the nominee. Overall, 54% of the voters polled were in favor of Biden dropping out.

The White House did not immediately return Fox News Digital's request for comment. 

Fox News' Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report.