Former Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., a longtime ally and friend of President Joe Biden, said Thursday that Biden should consider the same question that Leahy did when he decided to retire from the U.S. Senate.
“What have you left the country?” Leahy said in an interview, describing what he thought the president should ponder. “Right now he can point to a huge number of things that he’s left the country.”
Leahy recalled his own decision in November 2021 not to run for a ninth term representing Vermont in the Senate. “When I retired I could point to things that went on page after page after page that I’ve left the country, and in many instances by bringing members of Congress who are polar opposite together.”
Leahy said that Biden “has done far more for the country in his three and a half years, by far, than what Donald Trump did,” including leading NATO in opposing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Leahy declined to say whether he believed Biden should step aside, insisting that he first wanted to tell the president directly of his views. But notably, Leahy did not call for Biden to remain in the race.
Other Biden allies, including former President Barack Obama and U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the former House speaker, have remained publicly silent while privately encouraging Biden to drop out of the race following Biden’s disastrous showing at a debate late last month.
Last week, U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., became the first Democratic senator to call for Biden to abandon the race. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on the other hand, has consistently called on Biden to continue his reelection bid.
At a press conference Friday in Berlin, Republican Gov. Phil Scott said that, since the debate, he has believed that neither Biden nor Trump were “fit for office,” though for different reasons.
“I’ve seen the decline in President Biden — in his health,” Scott said. “And I think he should — it’s obviously his decision to make, but I think he should step aside. I don’t think that he’s competent to serve another four years.”
Asked if he would vote for Biden if the president remained on the ticket, as Scott has previously said he did in the 2020 election, the governor said, “I don’t think so.”
Leahy was 81, the same age as Biden is now, when he announced his decision to retire from politics. His 48-year career made him the third longest-serving U.S. senator in history.
Leahy said Thursday that he decided to retire “because I thought I was at the top of my game.” He cited among his accomplishments the passage of landmine legislation, a Vietnam war victims fund, organic farm bill, school breakfast program, and funding for Vermont for flood and Covid relief that was “per capita far more than anywhere else in the country.”
“Almost all the things I really wanted to accomplish got done.” He added that he and his wife, Marcelle, who survived several bouts of cancer, “were both homesick.”
Leahy reflected that he and Biden “have been friends for a long time.”
“When I came to the Senate, I was the second youngest member of the Senate. Joe Biden was youngest. I remember us both being told, ‘You guys work hard and you might amount to something, but right now you’re very junior senators.’ We used to joke about that after he was president and I was (Senate) president pro tem.”
Leahy spoke about a number of issues during a wide-ranging interview with VTDigger. He said of the selection of Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, as Trump’s vice presidential nominee, “Well, politically, it probably is a good thing because (Vance) was willing to totally change his position on just about everything. I’m sure that appeals to Trump, who changes his position any time he feels it helps him.”
“There is one position (Vance) has always stayed consistent with that they may have trouble with, and that’s on abortion,” Leahy said. He added that Trump was “trying to back away from … doing away with Roe vs. Wade … (while) Vance says, ‘No, abortion should be against the law everywhere.’”
Leahy, who chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee for 10 years, denounced the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision granting broad immunity to Trump on election subversion charges.
“The decision is something you might expect from a totalitarian government,” Leahy said.
Asked if the Supreme Court had become “politicians in robes,” Leahy replied, “Yes. And I’ve never felt that way about any Supreme Court before, even where I disagreed with it.”
“I was never open to the expansion of the court or term limits,” he said. “I’m reaching that point now.”
Leahy recently wrote an op-ed accusing Israel of violating the Leahy Law, which triggers the suspension of U.S. military aid to countries guilty of human rights abuses. He said that the law “has saved thousands of lives” in countries around the world.
“The only place where it hasn’t been adequately applied by any means is in Israel,” he said Thursday. “And I think that’s wrong.”
