Former Biden officials aren’t sure they can put the president in a room with a foreign adversary, New York Times reporter says

Former administration officials said they were unsure about putting President Biden in a meeting room with a foreign adversary after last week’s disastrous debate performance, according to a reporter.

In a panel discussion titled “Inside Politics with Dana Bash,” New York Times White House correspondent Zolan Kanno-Youngs said European officials who recently met with Biden had remarked about his “decline.”

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

“We also spoke to officials who said, ‘Look, if I were still working for President Biden and the United States government, they wouldn’t be confident in inviting me to 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 81, faces the most difficult period of his bid for a second term in the White House.

His halting speech and hesitant responses during CNN’s presidential debate last Thursday sparked widespread panic within the Democratic Party and prompted political pundits, columnists and party donors to call on Biden to step down as the party’s standard-bearer for 2024.

Biden recently blamed his shaky performance in the presidential debate on a series of recent trips to Europe, telling an audience gathered in Virginia for a campaign fundraiser last night that he had “not been very smart” to have “gone around the world a few times” before running. The president, however, spent two days in Delaware and six at Camp David between those back-to-back trips and the debate.

Biden spoke as pressure remained strong Wednesday morning for the president to withdraw his reelection bid and let another Democrat seek the nomination.

“I decided to travel around the world a couple times… shortly before the debate… I didn’t listen to my team… and then I almost fell asleep on stage,” Biden said at the event Tuesday night in McLean, according to a press pool report.

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A USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll released this week found that more than four in 10 Democrats believe the Democratic Party should step in and replace Biden as the nominee. Overall, 54% of voters surveyed supported Biden’s removal.

The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Fox News’ Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report.