Washington
CNN
—
President Joe Biden was bracing for a week-long political onslaught.
More Democrats are expected to publicly call for him to withdraw from the 2024 race, a grueling campaign schedule will showcase his stamina and key television interviews are sure to put the spotlight back on questions about his age, health and fitness to serve a second term.
That all seemed to change Saturday evening when gunshots rang out at a Donald Trump political rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
For at least a moment, politics all but ground to a halt. As bipartisan calls poured in from across the country condemning the horrific attacks on Trump, the Biden campaign immediately halted its television advertising and political communications, and the White House postponed the president’s planned visit to Texas on Monday to attend a fundraiser. The president also addressed the nation from the Oval Office, calling for de-escalation of political tensions.
Something else that all but halted was calls from within Biden’s own party for him to abandon his campaign for a second term, calls that have been growing daily since his disastrous defeat in last month’s debate with Trump.
While Biden’s team carefully navigates a moment of national trauma and shock, some of the president’s allies are privately hoping that the assassination attempt on Trump will ultimately lead to crushing Democratic opposition as Democrats realize the importance of standing together in unity. Biden returns to the campaign trail this week with a visit to the key battleground state of Nevada. The visit will be the first public test of his campaign against his predecessor as the nation reels from Saturday’s shocking footage. Before leaving for Las Vegas, Biden will sit down with NBC’s Lester Holt at the White House. In the aftermath of the deadly Trump rally, the interview now takes on a different meaning.
“That’s what’s likely to happen,” one of Biden’s aides told CNN when asked if Saturday’s attack could ultimately lead to that, but they added that it’s “too early to tell. The tone over the next few days, particularly the Republican National Convention, will have a big impact.”
Democratic activists saw the days following Biden’s news conference at the NATO summit last weekend as a critical turning point for his campaign amid a slowly growing chorus of calls for the president to step down.
While allies acknowledged the president’s solo news conference was much stronger than his performance at the debate, concerns remained, including from donors who continued to hold back on large contributions.
“It all hinges on this weekend,” one strategist who knows Democrats wondering whether to abandon Biden’s efforts told CNN before the weekend.
Those talks were paused but not halted entirely after the assassination attempt on Trump, the people said, as the political establishment considered the impact of the incident and the need for the president to assume a leadership role.Biden spent his first 24 hours after Trump’s rally trying to reassure the public with three separate addresses, including a rare prime-time speech from the Oval Office, where he promised, in between briefings by the heads of various law enforcement agencies, that his administration would hold the country accountable for Saturday’s massive security breach.
Before the Trump rally in Pennsylvania began, Biden was in a tense conference call Saturday afternoon with a group of moderate House Democrats known as the New Democrat Coalition. One of the toughest questions came from Rep. Jason Crow, D-N.Y., who asked whether concerns about Biden’s mental health affected national security, two sources told CNN. Biden was animated, the sources said, as he defended his record and cited the work he’s done to strengthen NATO.
Lawmakers sought reassurance from Biden through the conference call but their words at times fell on deaf ears, and sources said the president’s response came off as defensive.
“The president doesn’t have an answer to the question of what he’s going to do to change the tide of this election,” Democratic Rep. Adam Smith told CNN after the call on Saturday, adding that the president was primarily focused on his accomplishments while in office.
“The message we’re getting from him and his team is, shut up and comply, everything’s fine,” said Smith, who has called on Biden to step aside. “That’s not OK.”
While this awareness campaign was underway, some of the president’s closest advisers called for unity.
“For us to be successful, we need all wings of our party working together,” Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-N.Y., told Al Sharpton on MSNBC’s “Politics Nation” on Saturday, before the shooting at the Trump rally. “So what I’d like to see is us focusing on the future for a while, especially while the other side is having their convention.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also traveled to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, over the weekend to meet with Biden, a sign of continuing unrest within the party. Schumer said in a statement that the meeting was “good,” but a person familiar with the conversation said it was as open and frank as Biden’s meeting two days earlier with House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Neither Schumer nor Jeffries, who has expressed concern about the damage to the Democratic nominee, implied after their respective meetings that they fully support Biden’s decision to continue the campaign.
Biden’s advisers had also braced Sunday’s show for potential high-profile defections, but those anticipated debates were quickly overshadowed by the reaction to the assassination attempt on Biden’s predecessor and political rival.
With the Biden campaign in full survival mode, advisers were hoping the president’s speech in Detroit on Friday would help allay some of the concerns Democrats have about Biden’s standing as a candidate, including whether he can effectively make his case against his Republican rivals.
Speaking to supporters in Michigan urging him to stay in the race, Biden delivered one of his most forceful rebukes of Trump of the campaign and detailed for the first time what the first 100 days of his second term would involve.
“Voters care about the issues, and we think that’s going to matter when they go to the ballot box,” a campaign aide said after the speech. “Outside of Washington, it feels different, it looks different, what motivates people is different.”
Republicans are holding their national convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, this week to show their support for President Trump, as a photo of the defiant former president with his fist pumped in the air and the right side of his head covered in blood has become one of the most iconic in modern American history.
