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      Robert F Kennedy Jr promises to not ‘take sides’ with respect to 9/11 if elected president

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr has 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.“My take on 9/11: It’s hard to tell what is a conspiracy theory and what isn’t. But conspiracy theories flourish when the government routinely lies to the public,” Kennedy wrote on Friday in a post on X in reference to the deadliest terrorist attack ever aimed at the US. “As president I won’t take sides on 9/11 or any of the other debates.“But I can promise … that I will open the files and usher in a new era of transparency.”The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people in 2001 after terrorists hijacked and crashed passenger planes into New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon in Washington DC and a field in Pennsylvania.Kennedy’s decision to revisit one of the most traumatic subjects in American history came just three days after the noted conspiracy theorist responded to an allegation that he sexually assaulted a babysitter previously in his employ by saying: “I’m not a church boy” and “I am who I am.”That allegation – reported in Vanity Fair – came amid growing scrutiny of his independent run for president, which has fueled worries among Democrats and Republicans that he could decide November’s election by pulling votes away from Joe Biden, Donald Trump or both in key states.Friday’s statement on X was not the first time Kennedy had expressed dubiousness about the US’s official account of 9/11. In a podcast interview in September, he refused to say al-Qaida carried out the attacks – as the terrorist organization acknowledged and investigators determined long ago.Kennedy wrote on Friday that he was prompted to speak out by a recent report from the CBS news program 60 Minutes which chronicled how a man identified by the FBI as a Saudi intelligence agent filmed locations in the center of Washington just three months before 9/11.A court action from family members of September 11 victims, who contend that the Saudi government was complicit in the terrorist attacks, brought the footage to light. Saudi rulers deny the victims’ families’ claims.For his part, Kennedy on Friday described himself as “agnostic” concerning 9/11, so-called UFOs “and other contentious topics”.“My issue is transparency,” Kennedy added in a related follow-up post on X.Kennedy is polling at less than 10% of the national vote and is highly unlikely to win the presidency, according to FiveThirtyEight’s average.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHis relation to his father, Robert F Kennedy – the New York senator who was assassinated in 1968 – and uncle John F Kennedy, who was president at the time of his 1963 assassination, has afforded his campaign attention. So has his marriage to actor and comedian Cheryl Hines.In addition to his 9/11 skepticism, peddling falsehoods about Covid-19 and vaccine safety has seemingly undermined Kennedy’s effort to attract wider support. And so have outlandish claims such as linking antidepressants to school shootings and asserting that certain chemicals in water make children transgender.The 27 June presidential debate – marked by a calamitous Biden performance that left his party in a panic as well as Trump’s rapid-fire delivery of lies and half-truths – did little to improve Kennedy’s standing.A recent HarrisX/Forbes poll found a paltry 18% of voters were more likely to vote for a third-party candidate after the debate.“Whatever shaking of the box happened with the debate, these voters aren’t really yet thinking about RFK Jr or any of the third-party candidates,” HarrisX chief executive officer Dritan Nesho later said. “None of the tickets are prominent enough at this stage to be able to capture a good share of vote – at least that’s what we’re seeing in polls right now.” More

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      Leading neurosurgeon calls on Biden to undergo testing and release results

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      Fallout from Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance last week continues to draw calls for health exams and clinical testing for the US president, and speculation.High-profile neurosurgeon Dr Sanjay Gupta called on Biden Friday to undergo neurological testing and release the results to the public, saying he and other brain specialists believe a detailed cognitive exam is warranted.“From a neurological standpoint, we were concerned with his confused rambling; sudden loss of concentration in the middle of a sentence; halting speech and absence of facial animation, resulting at times in a flat, open-mouthed expression,” Gupta wrote for CNN.Gupta qualified that his suggestion was based on “only observations, not in any way diagnostic of something deeper”. He continued that “the president should be encouraged to undergo detailed cognitive and movement disorder testing, and those results should be made available to the public”.Gupta’s article followed a recent New York Times story, based largely on anonymous sources, that people in contact with Biden reportedly had recently noticed the president making more factual errors and losing concentration.The same story raised the specter of Parkinson’s disease, although publicly available medical records show no evidence that the president has the disease. Parkinson’s is a neurodegenerative disease associated with a stiff gait, changes in motor skills and lack of facial expression. Some people also experience cognitive decline.The president’s primary care physician, Dr Kevin C O’Connor, told the New York Times that he observed “no findings which would be consistent with” Parkinson’s disease in his most recent physical of the president.The president’s most recent physician’s examination, from February, attributed his stiff gait to a healed foot fracture and peripheral neuropathy. Peripheral neuropathy is nerve damage that, in the president, resulted in a deficit in sensing hot and cold in his feet. O’Connor reported the president “continues to be fit for duty” with “no new concerns”.Biden’s age, 81, has been a locus of concern for voters. Those concerns were piqued by a debate performance that was widely considered jumbled and disjointed. Trump is only three years Biden’s junior, at 78.Notably, voters don’t particularly like either candidate. In a survey released by the Wall Street Journal two days after the debate, about half of voters said they were not enthusiastic about either candidate on the ticket and would like to replace them both.Biden and his team have defended his debate performance and batted back calls to step aside by saying the president had a cold and was tired after international travel. Biden told Democratic governors that he needed to listen to his team’s warnings about his schedule, and get more sleep.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGupta’s warning also draws on a tension in medicine that has been especially animated in the last two presidential administrations: between professionals’ “duty to warn” Americans about the fitness of their leaders and the potentially high degree of error inherent in “armchair” medicine.During the Trump administration, a group of psychiatrists authored a book warning that the former president could be perhaps dangerously mad and a narcissist. The warning prompted the American Psychological Association to reiterate its commitment to the “Goldwater rule” against “armchair psychiatry”.Cardiologists also questioned whether the former president was at risk of a heart attack because of high cholesterol levels reported by the White House physician, Dr Ronny L Jackson. At that time, Jackson reported the former president was in “excellent” cardiac health.Amid pronounced concerns about Biden’s age, Trump’s rally speeches have been criticized as rambling, bizarre, incoherent and fascistic. For instance, Trump once described Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system as: “Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. They’ve only got 17 seconds to figure this whole thing out. Boom. OK. Missile launch. Whoosh. Boom.” Trump, like Biden, has lapsed when trying to recall specific facts. 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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      #KHive: Kamala Harris memes abound after Joe Biden’s debate disaster

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      In the aftermath of Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, left-leaning Americans can’t stop talking about the vice-president online. Memes about Kamala Harris are spreading with a speed and enthusiasm previously unseen on X and Instagram.Supercuts of her set to RuPaul’s Call Me Mother. Threads of her “funniest Veep moments”. Collages of jokes about her over a green album cover a la Charli xcx’s Brat. Numerous riffs on a comment she made about a coconut tree. Previous progressive snark about Harris has cast her either as an incompetent sidekick a la HBO’s Veep or as an anti-progressive cop, a reference to her years as California’s top law enforcement official. But as rumors circle about discussions of Biden dropping out of the presidential race, social media commentary on the nation’s second-in-command has grown more positive – even if ironically so.The Veep clips describing Harris now show Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) becoming president despite her years of ineptitude. The cop jokes come with side-by-sides of the vice-president and Donald Trump’s mugshot. Witness the rise of the “KHive”, a term coined by MSNBC’s Joy Reid for fans of the vice-president in the style of Beyonce’s Beyhive. And as the memes take a turn, so too have the polls. Recent numbers indicate Harris is having a “surprise resurgence”, polling more positively against Trump than Biden and all other rumored Democratic candidates, including Gavin Newsom and Pete Buttigieg.The bleak wake of the debate is not the first time the vice-president has inspired jokes on social media, though it is the loudest. A video of Harris informing Joe Biden the two had won the 2020 election – most of all her “we did it, Joe” remark – has been a popular meme since the start of the administration.Conservatives have also made jokes at the vice-president’s expense for years now. In a January 2022 interview about the administration’s Covid policies, she gave the tautological answer: “It’s time for us to do what we have been doing, and that time is every day.” Fox News said she had been “crushed for non-answer”. The Daily Wire said she “incoherently babbles”. Ben Shapiro said on TikTok: “Every day, there is a new all-time Kamala Harris clip.”The recent meme cycle, whether joking or authentic, celebrates these kinds of verbal gymnastics, which are characteristic of Harris’s speeches – sometimes profound, sometimes nonsensical. Her most popular quip involves her mother and a coconut tree. In May 2023, she said, “My mother used to – she would give us a hard time sometimes, and she would say to us, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’ You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.” The story was part of a speech on educational economic opportunity for Latino Americans; you can read the full transcript on the White House’s website.A simple coconut emoji has become shorthand for the vice president. Mashups of her coconut tree anecdote have become punchlines in videos, images, and text on X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and TikTok, racking up tens of thousands of likes and retweets. Several of her other trademark remarks have enjoyed a similar resurgence.The Biden-Harris campaign seems to have taken notice and intends to ride the virtual wave of support, even if it did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The president and vice-president posted a job ad on 3 July in search of a social media strategist for Harris specifically. The aide will write posts for Harris every day in an effort to “expand the vice-president’s voice online”, per Politico.The explosion of Harris content mirrors how Donald Trump’s speeches and tweets spread as memes. His bizarre, idiosyncratic way of talking and tweeting makes for funny reference points on both right and left, insertable into unrelated jokes for the pastiche effect of the best absurd online humor. Outlandish rhetoric that stands out for its flourishes – whether putatively weighty like Harris or unapologetically pugnacious like Trump – makes for good punchlines.Another of Harris’ aphorisms appears with almost comic frequency and has made its way into the online frenzy over her: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.” A supercut of her making the remark in dozens of different public appearances, nearly four minutes of the same phrase repeated over and over again, has been retweeted nearly 9,000 times.A video of her dancing alongside a drum line has also resurfaced, remixed to showcase her ascendancy as Biden’s star fades. As one tweet of the video reads: “Kamala seeing the CNN polls this morning.” Her distinctive laugh, which makes an appearance in the coconut tree tale before her demeanor and tone turn inexplicably somber, has long inspired posts remarking on her willingness to display emotion in public. Biden, by contrast, spoke in a feeble monotone during the debate. Against Trump’s gesticulation and rancor, Biden appeared gray and weak. Observers online wonder: could Kamala stand up to Trump, as she once did to Biden himself?Why the enthusiasm for Harris now? Perhaps despair over the other two options. One tweet crystalizes the reason for the quick shift in the vibes online: “Who cares if she’s weird? At least she’s not a felon or 80.”And is the turn to Harris genuine or just a nihilistic joke in the face of an uninspiring election? The same tweet winks with absurd maximalism of internet speech: “We need a Gemini Rising woman President from California who is on pills+wine, is campy, and didn’t get married until she was middle aged because she was too busy being a 365 party girlboss.”Parts of the tweet are true – Harris’ ascendant astrological sign is indeed Gemini – but “365 party girlboss” is a reference to Charli xcx’s album Brat, another meme of the moment. There’s also no evidence she’s on pills.With the Democratic machine in disarray as rumors of Biden’s resignation swirl, it’s not clear what comes next for the vice-president – or the US. As one tweet blending multiple Harris quips stated, in an attitude of throwing exasperated hands to the sky: “God grant me the serenity to be unburdened by what has been, the courage to see what can be, and the wisdom to live in the context.” More

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      The US supreme court utterly distorted the true threat to American democracy | Lawrence Douglas

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      In its extraordinarily disturbing decision earlier this week granting presidents wide-ranging immunity from criminal prosecution, the US supreme court dramatically mis-weighed a competing set of risks to our constitutional democracy.On the one side of the scale, the court placed the possibility that a future rogue prosecutor will seek to settle political scores by indicting a former president for “insufficiently enforcing … environmental laws”.On the other side of the scale, we can place the possibility that a former president, having previously been charged with subverting the peaceful succession of power, returns to the White House, where he demands the prosecution of all those who tried to hold him to account.Or consider a related set of risks. On one side, the court imagines a president who is so fearful of the theoretical prospect of being prosecuted after leaving office that he fails to perform his duties in a “vigorous” and “energetic” manner. “Enfeebled” by the threat of future prosecution, the president is “chilled from taking the ‘bold and unhesitating action’ required of an independent Executive”.On the other side, we can imagine that a former president, having already successfully dodged any legal reckoning for his attempt to subvert the results of fair democratic election, now finds himself back in the White House and, cloaked with a blanket of immunity for all his “official actions”, grossly abuses that power.What are we to make of the fact that the court has clearly perceived the risks posed by a rogue prosecutor to far outweigh those posed by a rogue president – this notwithstanding the fact the dangers posed by the former are entirely speculative while those posed by the latter are all too real? In defense of the six-person majority one might argue that the court must fashion principles that apply generally to future cases – it cannot shape a remedy to address the particular threat posed by Donald Trump.Only that’s not true. The court could have limited itself to the matter at hand – whether Trump enjoyed immunity for his alleged acts of election interference as charged in the federal indictment. It could have held off to another day the larger question or scope of presidential immunity. And it could have reached this narrow decision months ago, thus affording the American people a trial court’s judgment concerning Trump’s most serious attack on American constitutional democracy, prior to the 2024 election.A simpler, and less savory, explanation of the court’s decision is that it’s stocked with Trump supporters. Three members of the six-person majority owe their positions on the court directly to Trump and they are not even the justices most obviously sympathetic to the former president. (That would be Clarence Thomas, the rigid ideologue with a Maga wife, and Samuel Alito, whose understanding of the Constitution seems driven by a prickly sense of grievance – who also evidently has a Maga wife.)And while I have a hard time believing – call me naive – that Chief Justice Roberts isn’t keenly aware of the dangers posed by Trump, his majority opinion is astonishingly purblind to those dangers. Take, for example, the court’s conclusion that because the constitution vests the president with the “core” duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”, Trump enjoys absolute immunity for his dealings with the justice department – including his appeal to justice department officials, after Biden’s 2020 victory, to “just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me … ”The court’s logic is oxymoronic: because the constitution demands the president faithfully execute the law, he is immunized for his attempt to corrupt and subvert that very law.Let’s also bear in mind that hours before the court handed down its tardy decision, Trump reposted messages on Truth Social, his personal social media platform, calling for the prosecution and imprisonment of his declared political enemies. Among those targeted were the former representative Liz Cheney (“guilty of treason” – a capital offense), the former vice-president Mike Pence, senators Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell, representatives Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin, the vice-president Kamala Harris, and president Joe Biden.In his presidential campaign, Trump has been remarkably vague about his policy goals, but has openly and repeatedly declared his intention to use the justice department as a tool of personal vengeance. Now he can do so with impunity. At the very least, the court’s decision might shield Biden from Trump’s wrath – the others are all fair game.By way of trying to settle the nation’s nerves, the court reminds us that presidential immunity does not extend to private acts. Never mind that the court fails to offer a bright-line test between official and private acts while embracing a capacious understanding of the “official”. Still, we may rightfully ask what worries us more: the prospect that the president will rob a convenience store or that he will grossly abuse the very office that makes him the most powerful human on the planet?Back in the day of George W Bush’s misbegotten “war on terror”, John Yoo, at the time a lawyer in the office of legal counsel, wrote a notorious memo opining that the federal law criminalizing torture would be unconstitutional if applied to the president in times of war. This ominous claim led the senator Patrick Leahy to ask the then attorney teneral Alberto Gonzales, during a congressional hearing, whether the president could legally order genocide. At the time, Gonzales refused to answer, dismissing the question as hypothetical. Now the supreme court has offered a clear and shocking answer to the senator’s question.
      Lawrence Douglas is the author, most recently, of Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020. He is a contributing opinion writer for the Guardian US and teaches at Amherst College More

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      in UK Politics

      Trump congratulates right-wing ally Nigel Farage on UK election win

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      Support trulyindependent journalismFind out moreCloseOur mission is to deliver unbiased, fact-based reporting that holds power to account and exposes the truth.Whether $5 or $50, every contribution counts.Support us to deliver journalism without an agenda.Louise ThomasEditorDonald Trump has congratulated his right-wing ally Nigel Farage after he won his first seat in UK’s parliament following seven failed attempts.The British public went to the polls in the UK general election on Thursday, handing Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party a landslide victory and ousting Rishi Sunak’s unpopular Conservatives.Farage’s right-wing Reform UK party cinched four seats as its hardline immigration policies appeared to steal votes away from Conservatives.Trump took to his Truth Social platform to congratulate his old friend. Congratulations to Nigel Farage on his big WIN of a Parliament Seat Amid Reform UK Election Success,” he wrote.“Nigel is a man who truly loves his Country! DJT.”In his brief congratulations, Trump made no mention of the Labour party sweep and failed to congratulate Starmer – the man who he will have to form a close working relationship with should he win his own election against Joe Biden in November.Farage, who previously led UKIP and the Brexit Party, unexpectedly announced last month that he would stand in the July 4 election for the Reform Party and serve as its leader.His run marked a major u-turn after he insisted he would not be standing in the UK general election so that he could instead focus on helping Trump win his own presidential election.On Thursday, Farage sailed to victory in his race, overturning a 25,000 Conservative majority to become the MP for Clacton in Essex by more than 8,000 votes, finally winning a seat after failing in all seven previous attempts.The Brexiteer said his win, one of four for the Reform party, was “the first step of something that is going to stun all of you” and wasted no time in laying into Sunak’s moribund Tories, declaring: “There is a massive gap on the centre-right of British politics and my job is to fill it.”Farage and Trump have been close allies for almost a decade.It’s a bond that was first forged when Trump invited Farage to speak at his MAGA rallies during his 2016 presidential campaign, in the wake of the UK’s shock decision to leave the European Union – a cause Farage had spearheaded.After Trump entered the White House, Farage then interviewed him on LBC radio in October 2019, an exchange the American used to rebuke then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and offer his opinion on how then-UK prime minister Boris Johnson could make a success of Brexit.Reform UK leader Nigel Farage gives a victory speech at Clacton Leisure Centre in Essex 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