CNN
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It seemed like things couldn’t get any worse for President Joe Biden, and they appear to be.
The Fourth of July celebrations brought no respite from Biden’s disastrous debate performance, which has raised concerns about his ability to serve a second term and put his reelection campaign in an existential crisis.
And scrutiny will likely intensify Friday when the ABC interview airs, a key test of the president’s ability to stave off panic within the Democratic Party exactly four months after Election Day.
The White House’s latest attempt to defuse the controversy is already unraveling. The New York Times and CNN reported Thursday that the president told Democratic state governors that he needed more sleep and would no longer schedule events after 8 p.m., according to three sources briefed on the remarks. Biden’s reasoning irritated several governors who visited the White House to seek assurances about Biden’s condition, according to the sources. It is also likely to raise further questions about whether the president is physically strong enough to perform the full duties of the presidency, let alone near the end of his second term when he will be 86 years old. Biden’s remarks could also infuriate Democrats who want the president to be more visible and jump into spontaneous, unscripted events to prove his stamina and acumen.
But Biden again issued a firm warning that he has no plans to resign, a day after several allies said they privately acknowledged the coming days could be crucial to his hopes of staying in the White House. “I’m not going anywhere,” Biden told military families gathered to watch Fourth of July fireworks at the White House.
The administration’s attempts to excuse the president’s poor debate performance continue to backfire. So far, Biden aides, officials and allies have suggested that his debate preparation team was busy, that he was suffering from jet lag from two trips to Europe, and that he had a cold, even though the debate took place more than a week after his return. The White House’s credibility was once again dented when the White House announced on Thursday that the president had in fact seen a doctor a few days after the debate, despite White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying the day before that the president had not seen a doctor since his last medical check-up in February.
Biden’s latest predicament only adds to the pressure ahead of a crucial interview that will air on ABC on Friday night. The conversation with George Stephanopoulos is one of the campaign’s self-imposed tests to shake off the image of an unstable and sometimes chaotic president imprinted on the minds of 50 million viewers of the CNN debate. Any sign of impaired mental clarity in the interview could deal a further blow to the campaign. Democrats also want Biden to make a strong case for a second term and properly lay out his case against Trump, two things he failed to do in last week’s debate in Atlanta.
“It was a terrible night,” Biden said in a radio interview on “The Earl Ingraham Show” on Wednesday, “and the fact is, I screwed up. I made mistakes. I was onstage for 90 minutes. Think about what I’ve done in the last three and a half years.”
The problem with the president’s argument is that this debate debacle has forced voters to consider not only how his administration’s success compares to that of other modern Democratic presidents, but also whether they can imagine an even sluggish and weaker president in office a few years from now.
The debate’s aftermath is potentially very damaging, as Biden’s performance seems to confirm the view of an overwhelming majority of voters that the 81-year-old president is too old to run for a second term. A week of mounting crisis has at least temporarily erased the comparisons the Biden campaign had long hoped for with Trump, who has promised a revenge campaign if re-elected and who nearly destroyed democracy by refusing to concede defeat in the 2020 election.
And that means every appearance by Biden is now subject to intense scrutiny. On Thursday night, he ended his speech at a Fourth of July party with a familiar line: His emotions were deeply felt, but the effects of the president’s advanced age were clear, especially when compared to public events of even a few years ago.
At least two Democrats have so far called on Biden to step down before the Democratic National Convention in August, and behind the scenes there is deep fear among party members that the president’s problems will weaken them and lead to them handing not only the White House but also the Senate and House of Representatives to the Republicans.
Even Democrats who are solidly supportive of Biden want him to do more to prove to voters that he is worthy of a second term in the White House. Rep. Debbie Dingell, who represents Michigan, a battleground state in November, said on “CNN This Morning” Thursday that there is “a lot of fear” among voters about Biden’s debate results, but added that voters also recognize that any attempt to find a new candidate involves a delicate process. She argued that Trump also performed badly in the debates, but implored Biden to step up the pace of his campaign. “He’s got to go out there this week and show that,” she said.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who attended the Governors’ Conference at the White House on Wednesday after campaigning for Biden in Michigan, offered a passionate defense of Biden. He also downplayed the possibility of Biden shortening his schedule, which Republicans are sure to use to bolster their argument that Biden is unfit to be commander in chief. “That’s human nature,” Newsom told CNN. “And I’m happy to see the president acknowledge that he’s human too. So I think people are reading too much between the lines on that.”
Newsom, seen as a potential replacement for Biden if he decides to drop out of the race, was asked if he would support Vice President Kamala Harris for president in that situation. Newsom said he was “not going to get on board with that,” but acknowledged the question was legitimate.
Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz noted that Trump showed little rigor, claiming that the former president “spends half his day ranting about his plans to cause a recession on Truth Social and the other half playing golf.” He also claimed that President George W. Bush went to bed at 9 p.m. and President Barack Obama had dinner with his family at 6:30 p.m., and said that “normal presidents have a balance,” though this was a concession to the youth of his daughters, not to Obama’s age at the time.
Biden’s struggles are forcing the Trump campaign to ponder the possibility of shifting the electoral balance. The former president has now begun to step up his attacks on his successor with a new attempt to target the vice president in preparation for a Democratic presidential nomination swap. And on Thursday, the Republican frontrunner offered to debate Biden one-on-one, without a moderator. “I have the answer to the mystery of the incompetence of the villainous Joe Biden. Let’s have another debate, but this time, with no strings attached. A full debate, just the two of us on stage, talking about the future of our country,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
After the debate, Trump held a slight lead in some national polls, breaking away from months of a close race within the margin of error.The increasingly dim picture for Biden’s campaign has many Democrats worried — one reason why his planned ABC News interview and news conference at the NATO summit in Washington next week will be so important.
“I think we have to take a very sober look at the reality of the race as it stands,” Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., told “CNN News Central” on Thursday.
“It wasn’t just a bad night. It was a bad night that may have solidified a really unfortunate narrative about President Biden’s age and health, and that narrative may be very difficult to overturn,” Huffman said.
Huffman detailed a scenario that could send shivers down Democrats’ spine and raise concerns about Biden to critical levels in the near future, adding, “We’re four months away from the election, and right now we have a man who is a threat to our democracy, our fundamental rights in the free world, winning.”
