President Joe Biden rejected calls to end his reelection bid and denied that his debate performance had significantly damaged his campaign, a defiant stance that threatened to further unnerve Democrats who worry the president isn’t being sincere about their biggest political crisis.
Biden maintained in an interview with ABC News on Friday that he is physically fit to serve another four years, but refused to undergo an independent medical examination to reassure the public about his mental health.
He refused to acknowledge that he is trailing Donald Trump in the polls, said he had not directly heard any discussions among Democratic Party leaders about asking him to resign, and asserted that only “God Almighty” would encourage him to even consider dropping his candidacy.
While the 81-year-old president avoided the kind of major gaffes that plagued his rambling debate performances, his 22-minute prime-time interview with anchor George Stephanopoulos is unlikely to assuage concerns among voters, donors and Democratic Party insiders who have been panicking for the past week that not only could he not beat his Republican opponent, but that he might not be able to serve another four years if re-elected.
“As long as I’ve done my best and I’ve done the best job I can, I’ll be satisfied. That’s what this election is about,” Biden said when asked how he would feel in January if Trump won the election — a nightmare scenario for Democrats.
Biden’s stance is perhaps the only strategy for a candidate determined to keep fighting for a second term. Biden released a revised speech early Friday that acknowledged his age and included stronger attacks on Trump, but his campaign signaled he would push forward on Sunday with more events in battleground state Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
Several polls released after the debate showed Biden trailing Trump, some by as many as 6 percentage points, and a New York Times/Siena College poll found the share of voters who think Biden is too old to be president rose to 74 percent.
Reject the vote
But when asked if he thought he was behind, Biden replied, “Every pollster I’ve talked to says it’s 50-50.”
One Democratic donor, speaking candidly on the condition of anonymity, said he was angry that those around Biden weren’t urging him to step down and that continuing the campaign was delusional and self-serving.
“He is dangerously out of touch with people’s concerns,” David Axelrod, a White House adviser to former President Barack Obama who has criticized Biden, wrote in an X post after the interview.
Before Biden’s appearance on ABC, Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois joined a group of more than a half-dozen House Democrats who have explicitly called on the president to drop out of the race or said they believe Biden will lose to Trump in November’s election.
Biden acknowledged that Sen. Mark Warner, a prominent Virginia Democrat, is trying to rally other senators to pressure Biden to withdraw. The president said he has heard from others that he should continue the campaign.
“Mark and I have different perspectives,” Biden told Stephanopoulos.
“If the Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, step aside,’ I would step aside. The Almighty is not going to come down,” the president continued.
“I had no control.”
Biden said his poor debate performance was the result of a “bad episode” caused by a bad cold, with “no indication of anything more serious.” Asked when he realized the night was going badly, Biden suggested he’d been distracted at one point by Trump’s screaming.
“I realized I was not in control,” he said of that moment.
Asked if he had seen the debate performance that wowed his Democratic allies, Biden said: “I don’t think I have.”
In the interview, conducted during a trip to Wisconsin, Biden made it clear he was not considering dropping out of the race, saying those trying to pressure him were disrespecting the will of Democratic primary voters and that he believed he was the Democrats’ best chance of beating Trump.
The issue will be put to the test over the coming week amid growing concerns from Democratic lawmakers and donors.
After his visit to Pennsylvania, Biden will be in Washington to attend a NATO summit and host leaders starting on Tuesday. The president’s ramped-up schedule is a response to panic among Democrats in Congress who have demanded he do more to prove to voters that he is capable of serving in the White House for another four years.
For now, some Democrats remain cautious.
“We’re here to win,” Biden said Wednesday as he met privately with more than two dozen Democratic governors in an effort to stave off a crisis that has destabilized his presidency. He received votes of confidence from several, including California Governor Gavin Newsom and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
But a person familiar with the discussions said governors privately had been asking the president tough questions and that he acknowledged he needed to get more sleep going forward.
One of the attendees, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, issued a statement on Friday that stopped short of calling on Biden to withdraw but appeared to urge him to at least consider the possibility.
“I urge him to listen to the American people and carefully evaluate whether he remains our best hope of defeating Donald Trump,” she said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
