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      Joe Biden tells rally ‘I am going to beat’ Trump amid reports of new effort to get president to quit race – live

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      Addressing a crowd of whooping supporters, Joe Biden delivered an energetic rally speech in Madison, Wisconsin – a major swing state.Biden opened up his remarks by taking a jab at a Fourth of July comment made by Donald Trump in 2019 when Trump said that revolutionary war troops “took over the airports” from the British.“He’s a stable genius,” Biden said mockingly.He went on to vow to beat Trump but not before accidentally slipping up with his words.“I’m staying in the race … I will beat him again in 2020,” said Biden, before correcting himself a few seconds later by saying: “And by the way, we’re going to do it again in 2024.”Biden went on to address criticisms about his age, with the 81-year old president saying: “I keep seeing all those stories about being too old … You think I’m too old to restore Roe v Wade as the law of the land? Too old to ban assault weapons again? To protect social security and Medicare? … Too old to beat Donald Trump?”He then cited Trump’s criminal record, calling him a convicted felon with the “morals of an alley cat” and pointing to Trump’s involvement in the January 6 riots in 2021.“You can’t be pro-insurrectionist and pro-American at the same time,” he said, adding: “This is so damn serious. You can’t love your country only when you win.”Biden’s demeanor throughout his nearly 20-minute address on Friday was energetic and forceful, marking a stark shift away from his performance during last week’s debate, which saw him struggle to articulate his thoughts.With one campaign event out of the way, Biden has several more tests facing him amid these make-or-break days, with a crucial ABC News interview with George Stephanopoulos set to air tonight at 8pm.Another Democrat in Congress has expressed doubts about Joe Biden’s viability: Brad Sherman, from California, posted that he was looking forward to the president’s upcoming interview on ABC, but also said it was “important” that Biden conduct an “extended LIVE interview” as soon as possible.His statement further suggested that party rules do not mandate that Biden remain on the ticket:
      Counter to popular belief, the rules of the Democratic Party do NOT require that pledged delegates vote for Biden at the convention. Party rules require delegates’ votes, “reflect the sentiments of those who elected them,” at the time the delegates cast their ballots.
      Democratic Congressmembers Raúl Grijalva and Lloyd Doggett have publicly called on Biden to withdraw his candidacy. In another defiant speech, Biden told supporters in Wisconsin earlier today that he would not be quitting the race.The Biden campaign has responded to Donald Trump’s attempt to distance himself from Project 2025, a rightwing effort to aggressively roll back civil rights and other liberal policies. After Trump on Friday claimed, “I know nothing about Project 2025,” and “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying,” the Biden campaign pointed out the former president’s many connections to the initiative:The Make America Great Again Super Pac supporting Trump has run ads promoting the effort and calling it, “Trump’s Project 2025.” John McEntee, who served as director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office under Trump, was brought on last year as a senior adviser for Project 2025 via the Heritage Foundation, an influential rightwing conservative thinktank that has drafted the plans to dismantle and reorganize US government.Led by the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 is a manifesto that calls for a crackdown on immigration, the reversal of LGBTQ+ rights, further erosion of reproductive rights, the undoing of environmental protections and the implementation of other rightwing policy goals. Trump allies and former appointees have been involved in the effort.The Trump campaign previously said Project 2025 was not its own initiative, but that it was “appreciative” of suggestions from other groups. Trump has also directly praised the Heritage Foundation and said “we need the help” from the group, as Biden’s campaign pointed out. And the Heritage Foundation has also previously claimed credit for Trump administration policies.More here from our past coverage of Project 2025:Joe Biden will reportedly hold a solo press conference next Thursday, according to journalist Jacob Gardenswartz, citing senior administration officials on a call with reporters.Officials have not publicly confirmed the event, but news of a potential media conference led by Biden comes as the president has faced increasing pressure to speak with reporters and do interviews in the wake of his poor debate performance.Biden has done fewer press conferences and media interviews than any of his past seven predecessors at this point in his term, according to a report this week in Axios. His first post-debate interview will air this evening on ABC.Some key events and links from the day so far, as we prepare for Joe Biden’s major ABC interview to air this evening:
      Biden delivered an energetic campaign speech in Madison, Wisconsin, saying: “I am running and going to win again.”
      The Massachusetts governor, Maura Healey, broke from other Democratic governors supporting Biden’s campaign and issued a statement urging him to “listen to the American people and carefully evaluate whether he remains our best hope to defeat Donald Trump”.
      The White House said Biden was seen by his doctor after the debate and that the physician found he was fine and “recovering well” after reports he was suffering from a cold.
      Donald Trump attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, an agenda of rightwing activists to erode civil rights and other progressive policies under a second Trump term. But key figures involved in Project 2025 are closely linked to Trump.
      Several powerful Democratic backers have said they will pause donations until Biden steps aside.
      Robert F Kennedy Jr made a startling pledge to not “take sides” with respect to the September 11 terrorist attacks if his long-shot presidential campaign vaults him to the White House.
      Mark Warner, a Democratic senator from Virginia, is organizing a group of senators to urge Joe Biden to exit the race, according to a new report in the Washington Post, based on accounts of “two people with direct knowledge of the effort”.The Post reports:
      Warner is telling Democratic senators that President Biden can no longer remain in the election in the wake of his faltering debate performance, according to the people familiar with private conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely. The Virginia senator has told others that he is deeply concerned Biden is not able to run a campaign that could beat former president Donald Trump.
      The senator’s spokesperson did not confirm or deny the report to the Post, saying in a statement: “Like many other people in Washington and across the country, Senator Warner believes these are critical days for the president’s campaign, and he has made that clear to the White House.”The report was published as Biden delivered an energetic campaign speech in Wisconsin reiterating that he was not ending his campaign. But he continues to face pressure and scrutiny. The Massachusetts governor, Maura Healey, who has been a Biden campaign surrogate, issued a statement earlier today urging the president to “listen to the American people and carefully evaluate whether he remains our best hope to defeat Donald Trump”.Addressing a crowd of whooping supporters, Joe Biden delivered an energetic rally speech in Madison, Wisconsin – a major swing state.Biden opened up his remarks by taking a jab at a Fourth of July comment made by Donald Trump in 2019 when Trump said that revolutionary war troops “took over the airports” from the British.“He’s a stable genius,” Biden said mockingly.He went on to vow to beat Trump but not before accidentally slipping up with his words.“I’m staying in the race … I will beat him again in 2020,” said Biden, before correcting himself a few seconds later by saying: “And by the way, we’re going to do it again in 2024.”Biden went on to address criticisms about his age, with the 81-year old president saying: “I keep seeing all those stories about being too old … You think I’m too old to restore Roe v Wade as the law of the land? Too old to ban assault weapons again? To protect social security and Medicare? … Too old to beat Donald Trump?”He then cited Trump’s criminal record, calling him a convicted felon with the “morals of an alley cat” and pointing to Trump’s involvement in the January 6 riots in 2021.“You can’t be pro-insurrectionist and pro-American at the same time,” he said, adding: “This is so damn serious. You can’t love your country only when you win.”Biden’s demeanor throughout his nearly 20-minute address on Friday was energetic and forceful, marking a stark shift away from his performance during last week’s debate, which saw him struggle to articulate his thoughts.With one campaign event out of the way, Biden has several more tests facing him amid these make-or-break days, with a crucial ABC News interview with George Stephanopoulos set to air tonight at 8pm.In his closing remarks, Joe Biden said:“I have never been more optimistic about America’s future because the American people are decent, good, honorable. Just remember who in God’s name we are. We’re the United States of America …“So let’s stand together, win this election and exile Donald Trump.”“You can’t be pro-insurrectionist and pro-American at the same time,” Joe Biden said.“This is so damn serious. You can’t love your country only when you win,” he added.“Ultimately, the American presidency is about character … It’s about the president’s decency, integrity. Do they respect people or do they incite violence and hate? … And what’s worse, the supreme court has just ruled … for virtually no limits on the power of the presidency …“We just celebrated the Fourth of July saying we will not be ruled by a king.”“Trump’s biggest lie of all is he had nothing to do with the insurrection of January 6,” said Joe Biden.He went on to say:“We all saw with our own eyes. We saw he sent thousands to attack the Capitol. We saw police being attacked, the Capitol being ransacked, mob hunting for Nancy Pelosi, gallows set up to hang Mike Pence.“Let me ask you something, after what Trump did on January 6, why would anyone ever let him be near the Oval Office again?”Joe Biden repeated his popular line from last week’s debate, saying that Donald Trump “has the morals of an alley cat”.The crowd whooped in response as Biden went on to forcefully say: “Trump is a convicted felon … Donald Trump isn’t just a convicted criminal – he’s a one-man crime wave.” More

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      Trump asks judge to gut classified documents case after immunity ruling

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      Donald Trump moved on Friday to capitalize on the US supreme court’s decision to confer broad immunity to former presidents, asking the federal judge overseeing his criminal case for retaining classified documents to take a scalpel to any charges that were “official” acts that could not be prosecuted.The supreme court this week held that former presidents enjoyed some immunity from criminal prosecution for certain conduct they undertook in office, which also meant evidence of immune acts could not be introduced as evidence at any trial even if they did not form part of the charges.The framework of criminal accountability for former presidents, as laid out by the ruling, has three categories: core presidential functions that carry absolute immunity, official acts of the presidency that carry presumptive immunity, and unofficial acts that carry no immunity.The request from Trump’s lawyers did not say which parts of the indictment they considered to be official conduct that was immune. But if the US district judge Aileen Cannon agrees to go through the charges, it would almost certainly further delay the case by months.The filing not only showed the far-reaching ramifications of the immunity decision, which is now affecting Trump’s documents case in Florida even though the ruling originated from a pre-trial appeal in the former president’s 2020 election subversion case in Washington; it also demonstrated Trump’s intent to use it to destroy the substance of the cases.The 10-page filing from Trump’s lawyers asked Cannon for permission to file new briefs, arguing the immunity decision gutted prosecutors’ position that he had no immunity and “further demonstrates the politically-motivated nature of their contention that the motion is ‘frivolous’”.But Trump’s filing was doubly notable as it asked Cannon to pause all other proceedings in the case until she decided whether the special counsel, Jack Smith, and his prosecution team were authorized to bring the case in the first place.In a recent motion to dismiss the case, Trump’s lawyers argued that Smith had been improperly appointed since he was not named to the role by the president or approved by the Senate like other federal officers are – and that the attorney general, Merrick Garland, had no legal power to do so by himself.The motion appeared destined for denial after a recent hearing in federal district court in Fort Pierce, Florida, when prosecutors countered that Garland – under the appointments clause of the US constitution – had authority to name “inferior officers” like special counsels to act as subordinates.But as part of the supreme court’s decision, Justice Clarence Thomas gave the notion new momentum. “If this unprecedented prosecution is to proceed, the lower courts should thus answer these essential questions concerning the special counsel’s appointment,” Thomas wrote, albeit with respect to the 2020 election case. More

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      Biden dismisses age concerns and tells Wisconsin rally ‘I am running’

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      Joe Biden had a clear message at his Wisconsin rally on Friday: he isn’t going anywhere.“There’s been a lot of speculation – what’s Joe going to do?” said Biden. “Here’s my answer: I am running and am gonna win again.”He dismissed concerns about his age.“We’ve also noticed a lot of discussion about my age,” said Biden. “Let me say something. I wasn’t too old to create over 50m new jobs.”Biden focused largely on Donald Trump, decrying the January 6 insurrection and warning that a second Trump term could bring about the end of democracy.“Donald Trump isn’t just a convicted criminal,” Biden exclaimed. “He’s a one-man crime wave.”If Biden can find enthusiastic supporters amid a struggling campaign, it might be here, in Madison, Wisconsin, a liberal city with a history of turning out Democrats in droves during presidential elections.“I support him no matter what,” said Marcy Wynn, a Democratic party activist attending Biden’s Wisconsin rally on Friday.The rally formed part of a blitz of public appearances intended to reinvigorate support for Biden, whose faltering and confused debate appearance last week has spurred Democratic party leaders and donors to call for him to step down.Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic party, acknowledged that Biden’s debate performance had sparked anxiety within the party.“There’s no question that the debate was rough,” said Wikler. “It was even more scary watching the US supreme court announce that presidents have immunity from prosecution.”Biden’s campaign has cast the 2024 presidential election as a choice between democracy and dictatorship, pointing to Trump’s attempted self-coup in 2020 and the rightwing Heritage Foundation’s autocratic Project 2025 plan as evidence.“The specter of dictatorship looms over America,” said Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, while addressing the crowd. At stake, said Rhodes-Conway, is the “right to vote and to have a government that is accountable to we the people.”Biden was joined on Friday by an entourage of Democrats, among them the progressive Democratic congressman Mark Pocan and Wisconsin governor Tony Evers, who both spoke at the rally.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“If I had to summarize the last couple of years it would go something like this – Democrats getting shit done,” said Evers, who emphasized the state’s use of federal dollars to supplement infrastructural developments and repairs during Biden’s term in office. “The future of democracy runs right through the state of Wisconsin.”Biden’s difficult debate performance – and the supreme court’s decision to grant presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution – underscored the stakes of the election and raised fears about Biden’s ability to garner enough support to beat Trump in November.The Wisconsin rally drew some of Biden’s strongest supporters – including Pat Raes, the president of Wisconsin SEIU, a union representing service sector workers.“Fearmongers,” said Raes, when asked about the reaction to Biden’s debate last week. “I can’t think of another person as smart as Biden.”Earlier in the morning, Wendell Mullins – a retiree who lives near the middle school where the Friday rally was held – reacted with considerably less enthusiasm.Mullins watched the scene unfolding from his front yard and wondered how much good Biden’s last-minute effort would do.“Right now, if the election was held tomorrow, Trump would beat him easy,” said Mullins. “I’m 82 years old, so I know pretty much how I feel, and I’m sure he doesn’t feel much better.” More

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      From a calamitous debate to calls to drop out: the week that left Biden’s re-election bid hanging by a thread

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      History may record them as eight days that sunk a presidency, or at least the rockiest road to a convention in living memory – a week that has left Joe Biden’s re-election bid hanging by a thread.Day one – 27 JuneBiden and Donald Trump face off in an historically early yet eagerly awaited presidential debate, hosted by CNN. In a performance that leaves viewers startled and supporters horrified, the president speaks in a hoarse voice, mangles his syntax and repeatedly loses his train of thought, while abjectly failing to mount an effective argument against a gleeful Trump.At a post-debate event, the president’s wife, Jill Biden, puts on a brave face: “Joe, you did a great job,” she said. “You answered all the questions.” Her words and her husband’s frail demeanor only compound negative impressions of the debate display, as panic sets in among Democratic supporters who were shocked by Biden’s apparent frailty.Day two – 28 JuneAmid a chorus of Democratic doubts about his candidacy, the 81-year-old president attempts an immediate fightback at a campaign event in North Carolina. “I know I’m not a young man,” he tells a crowd cheering supporters. “I don’t debate as well as I used to, but I know what I do know … when you get knocked down, you get back up!” Observers wonder where this vigorous Biden had been the night before, though others noted he was speaking from an autocue.The New York Times editorial board calls for Biden to end his candidacy, describing it as a “reckless gamble” that risks a second Trump presidency.Day three – 29 JuneBiden holds fundraising events aimed at calming worried donors. Not all are convinced. One placard held by supporters turned protesters outside a fundraiser in East Hampton reads: “We love you, but it’s time.”The New Yorker magazine, another weighty, previously friendly publication, calls on Biden to drop his re-election campaign.Day four – 30 JuneBiden hunkers down with his family at Camp David for a gathering originally organised as a photo shoot with veteran celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz. His closest relatives tell him to stay the course, with his son Hunter Biden, recently convicted on gun-related felony charges, reportedly the most vocal.Day five – 1 JulyA far-reaching US supreme court ruling grants Donald Trump – and all future presidents – broad immunity from prosecution for their actions in office, making the likelihood that the case against Trump for attempting to overthrow the 2020 election would reach trial before the race ends. Observers note that the ruling – which one of the dissenting justices said would give Trump the powers of a “king” – makes the stakes of Biden’s poor performance even higher. Biden denounces the ruling in a short statement but does not answer questions from watching reporters.Day six – 2 JulyLloyd Doggett of Texas becomes the first sitting Democratic congressmen, to break ranks publicly tells the president to end his candidacy.Day seven – 3 JulyAnother congressman follows Doggett’s lead by telling Biden to step aside. Biden, responding to accusations of failing to reach out to party figures, meets Democratic state governors at the White House and admits that he needs to get more sleep. They emerge from the meeting reasserting their support for Biden.Day eight – 4 JulyFresh polls show Biden’s support eroding since the debate, with a New York Times/Siena survey shows him trailing Trump by 49% to 43%.Abigail Disney – the heir to the Disney family fortune and a major party donor – says she will withhold donations unless Biden dropped out of the race, following screenwriter Damon Lindelof, philanthropist Gideon Stein, and Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings. “This is realism, not disrespect,” Disney told CNBC, adding “if Biden does not step down the Democrats will lose. Of that I am absolutely certain. The consequences for the loss will be genuinely dire.”Biden tries to recover lost ground with a couple of radio interviews, recorded the day before, in which he admits “I screwed up”, but vows to a supporter at a Fourth of July barbecue at the White House that he isn’t “going anywhere”. More

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      Disney heir joins other Democrat backers to pause donations until Joe Biden steps aside

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      In the minutes after Joe Biden and Donald Trump stepped on to the stage for the first debate of the 2024 presidential campaign, the grand narrative of this election year shifted off its axis and, in the words of CNN’s veteran broadcaster John King, “a deep, wide and aggressive” panic set in among Democrats.A week on, and Biden has said he isn’t going anywhere, but a trickle of major Democratic donors speaking out against the president has grown into a stream.On Thursday, Abigail Disney – the heir to the Disney family fortune and a major party donor – announced she would withhold donations unless Biden dropped out of the race.“This is realism, not disrespect,” Disney told CNBC, adding “if Biden does not step down the Democrats will lose. Of that I am absolutely certain. The consequences for the loss will be genuinely dire.”In her statement, Disney said vice-president Kamala Harris could be an alternative candidate to beat Trump. “If Democrats would tolerate any of her perceived shortcomings even one tenth as much as they have tolerated Biden’s … we can win this election by a lot,” she said.For now, Disney represents a minority of donors, but within Biden’s campaign, a clear and concerted effort to tamp down panic among campaign funders is under way.On Monday, the campaign held a hastily scheduled call with hundreds of top Democratic donors, according to the Reuters news agency. On the call, Biden’s team reportedly promised to make the president more visible at town halls and through interviews to reassure the public.Despite their reassurances, the campaign was reportedly forced to field “pointed” questions from donors, including “can the president make it through a campaign and another term?”According to Reuters and the Associated Press, another call with about 40 top donors over the weekend turned tense after Biden’s campaign manager was asked whether the campaign would offer a refund if Biden doesn’t run.In the days that followed, one major fundraiser for the Biden campaign said some donors were learning fast how little influence they had in this situation. “There are a lot of people who think they are more important than they actually are,” the fundraiser said.Some donors have taken the same path as Disney; to halt funding unless the Democratic candidate changes.Screenwriter Damon Lindelof who has been a significant contributor to the party proposed on Wednesday a “DEMbargo”, withholding funding until Biden stands aside.“When a country is not behaving how we want them to, we apply harsh economic sanctions. It’s a give and take – short term hurt for long term healing,” Lindelof wrote in Deadline.According to CNBC, philanthropist Gideon Stein will pause almost all of a planned $3m in planned donations. “Virtually every major donor I’ve talked to believes that we need a new candidate in order to defeat Donald Trump,” Stein said.On Wednesday, Reed Hastings, the co-founder of Netflix and a Democratic party megadonor, joined calls for Biden to take himself out of the presidential race.Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, have been prolific supporters of the Democratic party, donating more than $20m in recent years, including roughly $1.5m to Biden during his 2020 campaign, according to the New York Times.The Biden campaign is eager to show its fundraising strength is holding up after the debate and have highlighted record “grassroots” fundraising in the days that followed the event. The day of the debate and the Friday after were best days for fundraising from small-dollar donors to date, with more than $27m raised across both days.But Biden’s standing in opinion polls has taken a hit, with 59% of Democrats responding to a Reuters/Ipsos poll saying that the president of their own party was too old to work in government and 32% saying he should give up his reelection bid.Biden held a $100m funding advantage over Trump just a few months ago, but his campaign and the Democratic National Committee entered June with $212m in the bank, compared with $235m for the Trump operation and the Republican National Committee.However, analysts predict that if Biden can continue to attract donations in the weeks leading up to the Democratic convention, he will be able to offer party strategist and fellow congressional colleagues a reason to stay on as the candidate.Reid Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn and an influential donor, has continued to throw his weight behind Biden, telling his donor network in an email that he felt it was counterproductive to be “musing on Biden’s flaws” and that they should be “organising around Trump’s flaws”.Reuters contributed to this report More

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      Biden says he ‘screwed up’ but vows to continue as polls show six-point lead for Trump

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      Joe Biden has told a radio show he “screwed up” and made a “mistake” in last week’s debate against Donald Trump, but vowed to stay in the election race, even as a series of polls show him now trailing the ex-president by about six points.In two interviews conducted Wednesday and aired Thursday with local radio stations in the battleground states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where he will also hold events this weekend, the president urged voters to judge him on his time in the White House.“I had a bad night,” Biden told Milwaukee radio host Earl Ingram. “And the fact of the matter is that I screwed up. I made a mistake. That’s 90 minutes on stage – look at what I’ve done in three and a half years.”To Ingram’s largely Black audience, Biden pointed to achievements during his presidency that increased representation.“I picked a Black woman to be my vice-president. I’ve appointed the first Black woman to be a supreme court justice,” Biden said. “I’ve appointed more Black judges, more Black women judges, than every other president in American history combined.”Biden also attacked Trump for comments the former president made about Black workers during their TV debate a week ago, when Trump said migrant workers could be taking as many as 20m Black jobs.“He’s done terrible things in the community, and he has about as much interest and concern for Black, minority communities as the man on the moon does,” Biden said.The interviews are part of a blitz of public appearances over the next few days that the president himself reportedly told a key ally were critical for whether he could successfully make a case for his re-election to the public, following a debate performance in which he appeared at times to lose his train of thought or blank out entirely.Although he secured the continuing support of Democratic governors in a meeting on Wednesday evening, the New York Times also cited two people in that meeting who said Biden admitted to the governors he had been feeling the effects of fatigue, needed to work less and get more sleep, and was aiming to reduce his number of engagements after 8pm.As well as the Wisconsin and Pennsylvania rallies, Biden will also give an another interview on Friday to ABC News, then to Good Morning America over the weekend.Clips of the ABC interview were originally scheduled to be aired on Friday night in the news time slot, with the full interview in two parts on Sunday and Monday, but the network announced on Thursday that it would now run the interview in its entirety on Friday.On Thursday, the White House told CNN that Biden had been examined by his doctor after the debate, during which he reportedly had a cold. The statement appeared to contradict the press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s assertion a day earlier that Biden had had no medical exams since his February physical.The White House spokesman Andrew Bates told CNN “the president was seen to check on his cold and was recovering well”.A gathering number of opinion polls conducted after the debate appear to show that his worrying performance, including an inability to successfully argue against Trump’s stream of unchecked lies, has hurt Biden with voters.According to a Wall Street Journal poll released Thursday, on Trump has opened a six-point lead nationally, at 48% to 42%, with 80% of respondents saying the president is too old to run for a second term – an increase of seven points since February.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt also found that Biden is viewed favorably by 34% of voters, and unfavorably by 63%. Less than 40% approved of his handling of the economy, immigration or his time in office overall.Another poll, from the New York Times/Siena, released on Wednesday also showed a six-point advantage to Trump, up from three a week earlier. Among registered voters, Trump led by eight points.According to the Journal poll, one-third of respondents, including 31% of independents – a key bloc of US voters on whom the election may turn – said the debate made them more likely to vote for Trump, while just 10% said Biden.A similar percentage of Democrats and Republicans – roughly three-quarters – said they considered Biden too old to run. Two-thirds of Democrats said they would replace Biden with another candidate.Meanwhile, a Fourth of July campaign message from the president also attacked the recent supreme court ruling that presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for an acts deemed “official”, saying it paved the way for the presidency to become a de facto monarchy.“Our nation waged a war based on the revolutionary idea that everyday people ought to govern themselves,” Biden said in the message, quoting the US constitutional principle “that we will swear fealty to no king” and that everyone is equal under the law – a founding principle that Biden said “conservatives on the court have decided presidents are free to break”.Speculation has been intensifying about whether more elected Democrats will call for Biden to step aside: only two congressmen have so far done so. Potential replacement candidates, including Kamala Harris, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and California governor Gavin Newsom, have strongly stated their support for Biden’s re-election.In a call to campaign workers on Wednesday, he is reported to have said: “I’m the nominee of the Democratic party. No one’s pushing me out. I’m not leaving.” In a fundraising email after the call, Biden said: “Let me say this as clearly and simply as I can: I’m running.”Trump had been running a roughly two-point lead in the polls earlier in the year, though his lead appeared to narrow and the candidates seemed to be running neck-and-neck before the debate. More

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      Who can we blame for Joe Biden’s gamble? Angry Democrats are starting to point the finger | Emma Brockes

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      In the wake of Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in the US presidential debate last week, the national tone shifted from shock and horror to fury. Biden himself, pityingly regarded, was spared the worst of the criticism. Instead, the two people who seem to have incurred the most anger have been his wife, Jill – suddenly thrust into the unhappy mould of the new Nancy Reagan – and, esoterically, the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Biden’s refusal to stand aside has thrown everyone back to RBG’s late-in-life vanity that ended in the overturning of Roe v Wade.Terrible as things are, there was, it has to be said, some relief in finally being able to say the quiet part out loud. With the energy of a cork leaving a bottle, a lot of people came forward this week with more evidence of the president’s “lapses”. In the New York Times, anonymous European officials who met Biden at the recent G7 summit in Italy belatedly registered their alarm; those who attended a recent event at the White House did the same. While big money donors joined the chorus of those freaking out, Biden’s aides pushed back with examples of how “probing and insightful” the president continues to be.That line of defence feels pointless now. “He’s inquisitive. Focused. He remembers. He’s sharp,” said Neera Tanden, the president’s domestic policy adviser– a remark that set the bar for the president so low it had the same chilling effect as Jill Biden’s kindergarten tone after the debate. “You answered all the questions, you knew all the facts,” she said on stage to her slack-jawed husband, whose improved performance at a campaign rally a day later couldn’t undo what 52 million Americans had just seen. You can flag the garbage that comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth until the cows come home, but it doesn’t make Biden’s state any better.If none of this makes unseating the president for another Democratic candidate either likely or wise, it isn’t purely for reasons of strategy. No presidential candidate has been replaced this late in the race and, of course, throwing open the field at the Democratic convention next month risks making the Democrats look even more vacillating than they already do. There is a sense of frustration that what may, to some degree, be an issue of presentation – the idea that, like his dormant stammer, Biden’s impairment is much worse during stressful public events than behind the scenes – is not the whole picture.Ezra Klein, speaking to the New Yorker last week, pointed out there is no indication that Biden is “making bad decisions”. He remains up to the job in ways that, of course, Trump isn’t. But if he can’t inspire confidence or speak coherently in public, his competence elsewhere hardly matters.Which brings us to the question of Biden’s own hubris. This is where, down the line, the real anger will focus. If the president is protected, for now, by sympathy, it will evaporate in November if Trump wins. The risk Biden has taken by standing for re-election is greater than President Emmanuel Macron’s backfiring decision to call a snap election in France. Biden is widely believed to be a good man, but his selfishness in running for a second term when he must know he is slipping will be his only legacy, should Trump prevail.To his enablers, then, the question: why wasn’t this caught earlier? You have to wonder at Barack Obama, popping up on X to defend and endorse Biden immediately after the debate. Who knows what’s going on behind the scenes – perhaps the former president spent the last year trying to talk Biden into stepping aside. But Obama’s swift defence of his friend and former vice-president certainly felt like an action inspired partly by guilt. Obama has, of late, been so busy making not very good films in Hollywood that his rush to defend Biden seemed like a piece of self-justification in the face of lapsed oversight.And there are many more in Obama’s position, clearly feeling that it is simply too late to change horses – partly, perhaps, to defend their own inaction, and partly because there’s no obvious replacement. Harris, who as vice-president would be first in line to take over from Biden, is a terrible communicator for entirely different reasons. (If you’re still in doubt about this, watch her at the BET awards this week: it will make you hide your face in embarrassment.) According to recent polls, while Harris is marginally more popular than Biden, she is still behind Trump.It’s beside the point, but the thing I keep coming back to is this: can you imagine what it’s actually like being Joe Biden right now? What a singular and terrible stress dream that must be? Imagine having to be president when you can’t remember people’s names and keep zoning out? It’s a naive thought experiment, I know; one that separates those who want to be president of the United States from those of us content to cap out at being president of our own living rooms. Still, the question remains: who on earth, in Biden’s position, would want the job?
      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist More