The pivotal event came as Biden seeks to defend his candidacy and persuade Democrats that his botched debate performance last month was simply a “bad night” and not indicative of a general decline in cognitive ability. The extraordinary importance of the press conference also underscores how Biden’s efforts over the past two weeks to downplay his debate stumbles and press ahead with his presidential campaign have so far failed to convince many in his party.
While the president has adamantly vowed to keep the race going and solidified his support with key voters this week, the number of senior Democrats who remained silent or offered little support suggests his lackluster press conference approval ratings could spark a new wave of defections.Anxious Democrats fear Biden’s weak showing in the polls and fewer public appearances could pave the way for Donald Trump to return to the White House, a prospect some are calling an existential threat to the country’s democracy.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said Wednesday he had “deep concerns” about Biden’s prospects for beating Trump, echoing Democrats who say Biden needs to do more going forward to reassure voters and lawmakers.
“I think Trump needs to continue to effectively and aggressively appeal to the American people and earn their support and the support of my colleagues,” he said.
Biden aides have suggested the president’s activities over the past two weeks — including multiple rallies, several interviews, several well-received speeches, impromptu conversations with supporters and his hosting of a NATO summit in Washington — have helped stave off calls for him to drop out of the race. Campaign officials pointed to a defiant letter the president wrote Monday in which he asserted he was staying in the race and highlighted expressions of support he’d received from Democratic Party officials in recent days.
Still, many party leaders remain skeptical, and some have warned they are particularly concerned about Biden’s inability to bounce back from the debate quickly and appear energized in public. Democrats have said in recent days that they want to see Biden speak in unscripted segments, without notes or a teleprompter, and show that his frequent struggles to finish sentences during the debates were a one-off.
The press conference, held a full two weeks after the debate, is seen by some in the party as a dark sign, with Democratic aides and lawmakers predicting the president will perform poorly in front of a reporter rife with tough questions about his age and competency.
Several congressional aides and some lawmakers, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations, said the news conference will be Biden’s first real test of his cognitive abilities since the June 27 debate, and that he will likely be unscripted and answer a wide range of questions. The event, which will conclude the NATO 75th anniversary summit that Biden hosted this week, is likely to focus most of the questions on his politics and health.
Biden will be speaking to reporters at a time when many in his party are disheartened by his weak position in the presidential race, with several polls showing him trailing Trump in key battleground states. At 78, Trump is only slightly younger than Biden, but voters have expressed far greater concern about Biden’s ability to serve another four years in office. A New York Times/Siena College poll released after the debate found that 74% of voters believe Biden is too old to effectively serve as president, and 42% said the same about Trump.
Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colorado, said on CNN on Tuesday that he was concerned Biden would lose to Trump in a “landslide victory” and that the White House needed to do more to “demonstrate that we have a plan to win the election.”
On Wednesday, Biden faced renewed skepticism as more lawmakers called for him to step down or said they wanted him to demonstrate more political vigor before fully endorsing him. Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) became the first senator to publicly call on Biden to step down in an opinion piece in The Washington Post. Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) repeatedly urged Biden to decide whether to stay in the presidential race, despite Biden’s insistence that he is determined to remain at the top of the Democratic field.
Also on Wednesday, Hollywood actor George Clooney, the top fundraiser for Biden’s reelection, called for the Democratic nominee to be replaced. Clooney, who hosted Biden at a fundraiser last month, suggested in a New York Times op-ed that the president is losing a race against time.
“It shocks me to say this, but the Joe Biden I was sitting with at a fundraiser three weeks ago was not the ‘big’ Joe Biden of 2010,” Clooney wrote. “He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same guy we all witnessed at the debates.”
The swirl of allegations surrounding the president has given Biden’s news conference extra importance, according to several Democratic aides, who have suggested they will be watching closely for signs of stumble or weakness. Meanwhile, Biden aides are hopeful that a solid performance on Thursday will finally put the drama surrounding the debate behind them.
Supporters and detractors alike say the timing could work in Biden’s favor. If Biden can get through the press conference without sparking new panic within his party, the focus will begin to shift to Trump and the Republican Party, who hold their nominating convention next week. Trump is expected to announce his running mate in the coming days, and Congress recesses next week.
Biden hasn’t always performed well in large, solo news conferences, which have been rare during his presidency.
Biden stood before reporters for nearly two hours in January 2022, answering questions on a wide range of issues and appearing at times irritated by reporters asking pointed questions.
After the event, First Lady Jill Biden scolded the president’s aides for allowing the event to drag on, according to the book “American Woman: The Modern First Lady’s Jill Biden Story,” which states:
Since then, the president has had far less substantive interaction with the media than his predecessor.
Biden: Trump has held 36 press conferences during his presidency, the fewest of any president in that time since Ronald Reagan, according to data compiled by Martha Joynt Kumar, professor emeritus of political science at Towson University and director of the White House Transition Project.
Biden prefers so-called two-on-one news conferences, where he speaks to the media while standing next to a foreign leader and limiting questions to two reporters from each country’s delegation. Biden tends to keep his answers brief, avoiding the kind of long-winded professorial responses or drawn-out, rambling responses favored by former President Barack Obama. A riff by Trump.
At recent news conferences, Mr. Biden sometimes read answers from note cards rather than improvising. His voice was low and raspy at times. He got names wrong and stopped short of finishing his thoughts. Republicans called out each of his gaffes.
White House aides, who often decide which reporters are invited, have sometimes tried to find out what questions reporters might ask before an event — a practice that predates Biden’s inauguration but has come under increased scrutiny amid the spotlight on the president’s mental health.
The two radio hosts on Saturday The Trump campaign last week submitted questions from Biden’s aides before meeting with him privately, a practice the campaign initially defended but later said it would refrain from doing.
Republicans countered that Biden is mentally incapable of answering unscripted questions, and Republican National Committee officials have become adept at capturing and circulating video of Biden stumbling in public, lambasting the president at news conferences and claiming, without evidence, that the sessions were scripted.
The content and tone of the president’s responses, as well as his demeanor, will be closely watched in the coming months as party leaders scrutinize whether he can deliver the Democratic Party’s anti-Trump message forcefully enough.
Biden has at times grown enraged when reporters try to ask him more than one question, and has lashed out at journalists who ask questions about issues he considers off-topic.
The meeting marked the culmination of a NATO summit in which the president announced the deployment of new F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, praised member states for increasing defense spending, and awarded NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Several journalists are likely to question Biden on Thursday. In addition to talking about the 2024 presidential election and the issues at stake in the campaign (age, health, political stance), world leaders will also be tuning in to see whether the president demonstrates his maturity and skill on various global issues.
Biden, meanwhile, has signaled he plans to use upcoming public appearances to challenge Trump more directly, telling donors on Monday he plans to take a different approach in upcoming debates with the top Republican candidates.
“Attack, attack, attack, attack,” he said.
Jacqueline Alemany, Lee Ann Caldwell, Marianna Sotomayor, Mariana Alfaro and Liz Goodwin contributed to this report.
