Joe Biden has reportedly told a source close to him that he is questioning the future of his candidacy following last Thursday’s disastrous debate, according to the New York Times.
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Nearly a week after a painful debate, the American president is far from having erased the impression left by these 90 minutes during which he stammered, stared into space and sometimes lost his train of thought.
“He knows that if he has two more events like this, things will be very different,” an anonymous insider was quoted as saying by the New York Times on Thursday.
The latter confides that Joe Biden is privately wondering about the future of his candidacy.
However, according to White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre, US President Joe Biden is “absolutely not” considering withdrawing his candidacy for a second term, at a time when questions are mounting about his mental acuity following a disastrous performance during his debate with Donald Trump.
The Democrat “continues to campaign,” she insisted to the press.
Asked by a reporter whether the 81-year-old president was considering stepping down, the spokeswoman replied “absolutely not.”
“He understands that it is legitimate for people to ask this question, but we cannot forget his record,” she insisted.
“That is completely false. If the New York Times had given us more than seven minutes to comment we would have told them,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates also replied on X.
CNN also reports that the current president of the United States recognizes, in conversations with his close allies, that the next few days will be critical for his presidential campaign.
Many Democrats, including party figures like Nancy Pelosi, have publicly questioned his mental acuity and even openly called for his removal, although such calls have so far been confined to a handful of little-known lawmakers.
Nancy Pelosi.
AFP
The meeting with the 81-year-old Democrat is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. at the White House. The United States has about 20 Democratic state governors, but the exact list of participants in the meeting has not been made public.
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“Healthy discussion”
“We will have a healthy discussion with the president,” one of the Democratic governors, JB Pritzker of Illinois, told CNN Tuesday night.
“Right now, Joe Biden is our candidate. I’m 100% behind him, unless he makes another decision, and in that case we’ll all discuss the best way forward,” he added.
JB Pritzker (left) and Vermont Governor Phil Scott.
AFP
The governor of Illinois, but also those of California (Gavin Newsom), Michigan (Gretchen Whitmer) and Pennsylvania (Josh Shapiro) are considered potential future candidates for the White House.
No one has so far publicly challenged the candidacy of Joe Biden, who crushed the Democratic primary and whose nomination is therefore a given, unless he voluntarily withdraws.
Polls conducted since the debate do not show a shift, which shows that Americans had not waited to worry about the cognitive abilities of the oldest president in the history of the country, but most confirm a slight advantage for Donald Trump.
Survey
A tally released Wednesday by CBS gives the former president 50% of the vote intentions against 48% for his Democratic rival at the national level, and 51% against 48% in the decisive states, all within the statistical margin of error.
So far, there is no indication that Joe Biden is imminently stepping down.
He will be campaigning in the coming days in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, two pivotal states (swing states), or decisive states in the race for the White House.
His campaign team released a new video on Wednesday, after the Supreme Court extended presidential immunity on Monday, a victory for Donald Trump, who has been criminally indicted several times.
The highest American court “has decided that the president can disregard the law even to commit a crime because Donald Trump asked him to,” the narrator assures, against a backdrop of images of the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 by supporters of the former president.
Travels
The message is clear: it is against the 78-year-old Republican billionaire, who never conceded defeat four years ago, that we must join forces.
The Democrat also plans to give an interview with ABC television on Friday and hold a solo news conference next week, aiming to demonstrate his ability to speak fluently without a teleprompter.
As for last Thursday’s poor performance, according to Joe Biden’s supporters, it was a “bad night” for a candidate who, in addition, suffered from a “cold.”
The main person concerned put forward another explanation on Tuesday.
He told donors that it was “not very smart” to have “traveled around the world several times” shortly before the debate, and that it had led him to “almost fall asleep on stage.”
Joe Biden visited France and Italy in June, then returned to the United States on June 15, twelve days before the televised debate against Donald Trump, which he spent six days preparing for, without an official agenda or public appearance during that period.
