David Gergen Calls for Biden, Trump, Older Leaders to Step Aside: Let ‘New Leaders Emerge’

CNN senior political analyst and former presidential adviser David Gergen called for President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump, and other older leaders to step aside and let “new leaders emerge.”

When asked on Wednesday’s New Day by co-anchor John Berman why he “would like to see a serious passing of the torch,” Gergen said, “I would.”

Gergen, who came out on Tuesday with a book about leadership, explained:

I think that the baby boom population in general, the people who came … who were born after the war ended, they’ve had their time in the sandbox now in governing. And I think, frankly, that while there have been some good things, there’s generally been a sense of disappointment about, you know, how well they’ve governed or how badly they’ve governed.

And very, very importantly, that we have an election coming up in 2024, in which it’s very possible that we will have Donald Trump facing off against Joe Biden. If one of those people wins the presidency, he will be governing when he’s in his 80 years of age. We’ve never seen anything like that before. And frankly, I think it’s a real risk.

Gergen explained that as an 80-year-old man himself “you lose a step” as “your judgment is not quite clear as it was.”

Therefore, he said, “to put somebody in that office with those kinds of vulnerabilities and give him four years, we don’t know where things will go. And I just think it’s a mistake for either party to put forward people who are going to be essentially trying to run the country in their 80s.”

“So to be clear here, David, you’re saying that neither Trump nor Biden should run again, even Biden, the incumbent?” asked co-anchor Brianna Keilar.

“I believe it would be in the best interest of the country for someone in their 80s to step back,” replied Gergen. “Regardless of party.”

Gergen applied his belief of older leaders stepping aside to congressional leaders. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are in their 80s.

He also said that Supreme Court justices should be “rotating off after a certain number of years, especially when you hit your late ’70s or early ’80s.” Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are the oldest justices on the nation’s highest court at 73 and 72 years of age, respectively.

Finally, Gergen called for “a mix” of Generation X and millennials to run for president.

Watch above, via CNN.