Joe Scarborough pursed his lips and jotted down a few notes at his desk. It was 6 a.m. on Friday, seven and a half hours after a diminished President Biden had gingerly stepped off the debate stage, and the host of “Morning Joe” on MSNBC was about to deliver a painful message to viewers of television’s most reliable redoubt of Biden support.
“I love Joe Biden,” Mr. Scarborough began as the cameras flipped on in his home studio in Maine. “I think his presidency has been an unqualified success.”
But.
“He spent much of the night with his mouth agape and his eyes darting back and forth,” the anchor said. “He couldn’t fact-check anything Donald Trump said. He missed one layup after another after another.” Now, he concluded, “is the last chance for Democrats to decide whether this man we’ve known and loved for a very long time is up to the task of running for president of the United States.”
This was no mere act of punditry. Mr. Biden, 81, is a skeptic of the news media, but Mr. Scarborough is among a tiny group of commentators who have his ear. The president regularly speaks with the anchor and is a devoted watcher of “Morning Joe,” a show that has defended him against all manner of attacks.
No more. And Mr. Scarborough’s defection mirrored that of other longtime Biden media allies who, often in elegiac and pained tones, urged the president to consider dropping out in the wake of his shaky performance in Thursday’s debate against former President Donald J. Trump.
Thomas L. Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times who speaks frequently with Mr. Biden, wrote that he had wept watching the president. “Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election,” he said. Evan Osnos, Mr. Biden’s biographer and one of the few journalists granted extensive access to him, called the president “clearly a person who was diminished from where he was” four years ago. And on CNN, the Democratic analyst Van Jones delivered a soliloquy brimming with emotion, full of poignancy, defiance and regret.
“I just want to speak from my heart,” Mr. Jones said, minutes after the debate ended, as he and his fellow panelists marveled at the disastrous nature of Mr. Biden’s showing. “He’s a good man. He loves his country. He’s doing the best that he can. But he had a test to meet tonight to restore the confidence of the country and of the base, and he failed to do that.”
Mr. Jones paused. “There is time for this party to figure out a different way forward.”
Representatives of Mr. Biden did not immediately return a request for comment.
For crestfallen supporters of the president, even TV’s reliably liberal spaces offered little in the way of comfort.
Rachel Maddow, anchoring MSNBC’s coverage on Thursday night, acknowledged that at times it was “hard to tell” what Mr. Biden was saying “because his voice was so weak.” Jon Stewart, who hosted a live “Daily Show” on Comedy Central after the debate, aired a compilation of cringe-worthy moments when Mr. Biden squinted at Mr. Trump, open-mouthed.
“I’m not a political expert,” Mr. Stewart said, “but while Biden was preparing at Camp David — for a week — did anyone mention he would also be on camera?”
“Morning Joe,” though, is of particular interest to Mr. Biden, who often asks his aides about specific segments he has seen on the show, according to a report in Axios. Supporters and Democratic officials hoping to influence the president occasionally contact Mr. Scarborough, believing his program is something of a conduit to the West Wing.
On Thursday night, as the debate unspooled inside a CNN studio in Atlanta, Mr. Scarborough fielded calls at home from numerous Biden allies who were shaken by what they were watching. He indicated to several of them that he would use the next morning’s telecast to send a candid message to Mr. Biden, according to two people who requested anonymity to describe confidential conversations.
It was clear that Mr. Scarborough was rueful about having to deliver such a blunt appeal to a president he admires. He prefaced his words with extensive praise for Mr. Biden’s record and, like other commentators on Friday, expressed deep regret that the situation had come to this.
His wife and co-host, Mika Brzezinski, offered a dissenting view, saying that while the president had “a terrible night” at the debate, she was “not ready to give up on Joe Biden — not even close.”
“I’m just not going to jump to conclusions here and jump on the hysteria train,” she told viewers.
Mike Barnicle, another regular on “Morning Joe” whom Mr. Biden respects, described himself as feeling “sadder and sadder and sadder.”
“Joe Biden had an awful night,” Mr. Barnicle said. “People were indicating to me on the phone, in messages and phone calls, that they felt badly for him. Unfortunately, nobody votes for president of the United States because they feel badly for someone. Elections are about the future, and the panic is now in full bloom.”
Katie Rogers contributed reporting.
