EPAJoe Biden
NOS News • Wednesday, 7:58 PM • Updated Wednesday, 10:23 PM
US President Joe Biden has said his public appearances in the coming days will be crucial in his decision to continue his presidential campaign, a confidant said. This was reported by, among others, The New York Times in ABC News.
The White House, however, denies that the president is considering dropping out of the race. According to press spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre, he is “absolutely not” considering doing so. According to another confidant, who spoke to CNN, the president is sticking to his guns. “Nobody is going to push me out,” he reportedly told his campaign team.
The president has a TV interview with ABC News and campaign rallies in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the coming days. After his weak performance in the debate with Donald Trump last week, he is under scrutiny in the media and in his own party. So far, there has been no indication that Biden himself has doubts about his candidacy.
However, The New York Times reports that according to the anonymous confidant, Biden “knows that if he has two more performances like he did against Trump, it will look a lot different by the end of the weekend.”
White House denies
Biden’s campaign spokespeople are strongly denying that he is considering dropping out of the race. Team Biden has been trying for days to downplay the damage from Trump’s “disastrous” performance in the debate.
The campaign has several explanations for the poor debate: he may have had a cold and suffered from jet lag. During a meeting for campaign donors on Tuesday night, Biden said he was tired, partly because of his trips to France and Italy two weeks before the debate. Spokesman Jean-Pierre said today that it was “both the president’s schedule and a cold” that were playing tricks on him.
United States Correspondent Marieke de Vries:
“The White House and the Biden-Harris campaign did everything they could today to put the genie back in the bottle after doubts were expressed within the Democratic Party whether Biden is still the right candidate to defeat Trump.
In an exceptionally long press conference, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tried to assure the assembled press that Biden intends to stay in the race until the end, that he is determined to do the best for the American people.
Biden understands the criticism after his poor performance during the debate, which is now being attributed to both a cold and jet lag, but he wants to look ahead. When asked whether Biden had undergone any other medical tests since his annual medical check-up last February, the answer was no.”
Although major party figures such as Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton announced shortly after the debate that they would continue to support Biden, in recent days there have been increasing voices from Democrats within the party who openly share their doubts. Lloyd Doggett, member of the House of Representatives from Texas, has become the first sitting member of Congress to say publicly that Biden should make way for someone else. According to The New York Times Reed Hastings, a Netflix co-founder who has become one of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors in recent years, also made the same call.
Party figures have also made cryptic statements. Nancy Pelosi, for example, wondered in an interview whether Biden’s debate performance was “a one-off or something that happens more often.”
Harris
Jim Clyburn, an influential black leader in the Democratic Party, says he will support Vice President Kamala Harris if Biden were to withdraw from the race. He believes the party should certainly not pass Harris, as the first black female vice president. “We should do everything we can to support her.”
Harris herself says she still fully supports Biden. She “looks forward to a second term with President Joe Biden,” she said in a statement. In polls by CNN, which organized the debate, Trump has been doing better than Biden for months. For the first time, Harris is now doing better in those polls as a potential candidate against Trump than Biden. According to the poll, Harris therefore has a better chance of beating Trump than Biden.
All hands on deck
It’s all hands on deck for Democrats now. Biden’s chief of staff, Jeff Zients, has scheduled a call for all White House staff, according to US media, to calm things down. And Democratic governors from across the country are gathering in Washington today to speak with congressional leaders and Biden himself.
It is striking that this also includes candidates who are mentioned as possible successors to Biden, such as Governor Gavin Newsom of California and Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky.
Watch a quick summary of the Trump-Biden debate here:
Stuttering Biden, Ukraine and a round of golf: this is how the debate between Biden and Trump went