President Biden’s family is urging him to stay and keep fighting in the presidential race despite his disastrous performance in last week’s debate, but some family members are privately expressing outrage over how the president’s staff has prepared for the debate, people familiar with the matter said Sunday.
Gathering with his wife, children and grandchildren at Camp David, Mr. Biden sought ways to quell Democratic fears. Relatives were keenly aware of how poorly Mr. Biden fared against former President Donald J. Trump but argued he could show Americans he could hold onto the presidency for another four years.
Biden has been consulting with advisers on how to proceed, and staff are debating whether he should hold a press conference to change the story or give interviews to defend himself, but nothing has been decided yet.
One of the people urging Biden to resist pressure to back down is his son, Hunter Biden, whom the president has long sought advice from, said one of the people familiar with the discussions, who, like the others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Hunter Biden wants Americans to see the combative, fact-ready father he knows, not the doddering aging president they saw Thursday night.
Other family members have also been thinking about how they can help, with at least one of the president’s grandsons expressing a desire to become more involved in the campaign, including by speaking to social media influencers, according to sources.
Democrats’ anger was on full display Sunday when major Democratic donor John Morgan publicly criticized the advisers who oversaw the preparations for the presidential debates, naming Ron Klain, Anita Dunn and Bob Bauer.
“For far too long, Biden has been duped by Anita Dunn and her husband’s values,” Morgan wrote on social media. “They need to resign today. This fraud is egregious. This is political malfeasance.”
He elaborated further in a later interview: “It’s like taking a pro boxer going into a title fight and putting him in a sauna for 15 hours and then telling him, ‘Go fight,'” he said. “I think the only people in the debate are Ron Crane, Bob Bauer and Anita Dunn.”
Biden’s family is also said to have been keeping an eye on the president’s staff, including Dunn, a senior White House adviser, and her husband, Bauer, the president’s personal lawyer, who played Trump in debate rehearsals.
Klain, the former White House chief of staff who oversaw debate preparations, questioned why Biden was so crammed with statistics and was upset that Biden, who arrived at the debate in Atlanta with a summer tan, had been made to look pale and sallow, said one of the people who has been in contact with several family members.
But the person said the president himself was not among those upset and that he still trusted Klain, Dunn, Bauer and others. Other Democrats said it was unfair to blame staff for the president’s own failures, dismissing what they called classic hindsight and scapegoating. Several Democrats pointed out that family members had not attended the preparation sessions.
In the days since the debate, Biden has privately and publicly acknowledged that he performed poorly, calling trusted advisers such as Klain, longtime aide and friend Ted Kaufman and historian and informal adviser Jon Meacham, as well as major donors and senior party officials.
But two people familiar with Biden’s call said it was more to see what people were saying than to seek advice on rethinking his future.One of the people on Biden’s call tree said the president wants to continue campaigning hard to contrast himself with Trump, a convicted felon who tried to overturn the results of the last election and made numerous false statements during the debates.
While the campaign has strongly rejected advice that Biden would step aside for another candidate just weeks before a roll call vote that will formally decide the nomination, many Democrats, including the president’s top aides, said they believe the door is not yet closed.
But Biden is a proud man, and they said they still think his chances of following through are about 4-5. The only way they could imagine Biden reversing course, they said, is if he is given a dignified exit that allows him to claim credit for ousting Trump in 2020, rebuilding the country and transitioning to the next generation.
A new CBS News poll found strong sentiment among Democrats that Biden, 81, should make way for a younger candidate. Forty-five percent of Democrats said they would like to see another candidate take on Trump. Among voters overall, just 27% believe Biden has the mental and cognitive health to serve as president, down from 35% before the debate.
Democratic stalwarts took to talk shows Sunday to defend the president. “If they’re not a little bit worried, they’re not a Democrat,” Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” But he added that “Joe Biden has shown character and grit, not over 90 minutes, but over the last four years, of who he is.”
Maryland Governor Wes Moore acknowledged that Biden’s age is a concern for voters. “81 is an important number,” he told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “But it’s also important to look at the historically low unemployment rate. I don’t think people should forget that.”
Moore said he would not run if Biden dropped out. “Joe Biden is not going to drop out of this race, and he shouldn’t,” he said. “He’s been a great partner.”
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi denied rumors that the president was backing out. “I support the Biden-Harris combination,” she told former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki on MSNBC. “Despite any speculation, I’m not abandoning Joe Biden at this point.”
Two Biden aides said that if any major discussions about the president’s future are to take place with the family, they likely won’t be held at Camp David, where many outside the family could hear about them.
The family had been planning a weekend getaway to Camp David even before the debate, partly to take part in a photoshoot with veteran celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz. It would have been the first time the entire family had gathered together since Hunter Biden was convicted of federal firearms charges and still faces a separate trial on sentencing and tax matters.
A senior administration official who was not authorized to discuss details of the internal conversations said discussions were ongoing about how the president should proceed — not about stepping down, but how to best make the case that he shouldn’t.
At rallies and fundraisers since Atlanta, Biden has come across as closer to the person his aides portray him: energetic, passionate and determined to keep fighting until November.
But some aides are not pleased with Mr. Biden’s reliance on teleprompters at fundraisers, an approach pushed by advisers who want the president to take a more disciplined approach privately. One aide said Mr. Biden has shied away from a more informal approach in recent months because he is “afraid.”
