Evan Vucci/AP
President Joe Biden, first lady Jill Biden, and granddaughters Natalie Biden (left) and Finnegan Biden arrived in East Hampton, New York, for a fundraiser on Saturday before the family traveled to Camp David for the weekend.
CNN
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Joe Biden’s family urged the president to stay in the 2024 race and privately discussed whether he should fire aides after Biden’s shockingly poor performances in the debates threw the campaign into disarray.
Biden’s family, including first lady Jill Biden, son Hunter Biden and grandchildren, gathered at Camp David as scheduled to urge the president to continue his reelection bid, Biden advisers told CNN, in a “clear voice of support.”
One adviser said the family was apparently unhappy with the team that prepared Biden for his explosive debate with former President Donald Trump and had discussed whether some of Biden’s top advisers should be fired or whether changes should be made to the campaign’s staff.
But Biden is known for being loyal and protective of his aides and is loathe to fire them, and as of Sunday no major personnel changes appeared imminent.
The praise and support that Biden’s family showed the president on Sunday coincided with glowing public praise for her husband from the first lady in recent days.
The family gathering at the president’s vacation home came as Biden and his campaign faced a torrent of calls for him to withdraw after Thursday’s CNN presidential debate, and the discussions focused on how the Biden family can help the president, not whether he should reconsider running, one adviser said.
Biden is eagerly gathering anecdotal evidence, polls and other data but is waiting for broader polling and surveys of Democratic campaigns this week to prepare for an expected drop in support in battleground states, the advisers said.The advisers blamed the slump in advance on harsh media coverage, not Biden’s own performance.
The impact of the CNN debate has yet to reach many, and the president and his aides are still processing its immediate impact. The family’s view that Biden must keep fighting could change in the coming days if they become convinced that the downward spiral will continue and that withdrawing from the race would avoid dragging down the Democratic Party this fall.
The opinions of Biden’s family will be crucial in determining his political future — even more so than those of the president’s notoriously insular inner circle of top advisers.
Those advisers are now under intense scrutiny, with party insiders openly questioning whether they knew what they were supposed to know and yet allowed the president to take on Donald Trump onstage last week. The Biden campaign has been holed up at Camp David for nearly a full week, preparing for every possible scenario the president could face inside CNN studios in Atlanta.
Biden and his family gathered Sunday for a long-planned photo op with celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz, though senior advisers insisted to CNN on Saturday that the gathering was not to discuss whether he would stay in the presidential race.
Concerns about some of Biden’s key staff have begun to surface publicly. Florida attorney John Morgan, one of the Democratic Party’s biggest and most prominent donors, has specifically criticized senior adviser Anita Dunn and her husband, Bob Bauer, who are Biden’s personal lawyers.
“Biden has been fooled by the values of Anita Dunn and her husband for too long. They need to resign today,” Morgan wrote to X on Sunday.
The White House declined to comment on Morgan’s post.
This story and headline have been updated with additional information.
