WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House announced Tuesday that President Joe Biden will meet with Democratic lawmakers and governors in the coming days, appear for a TV interview and hold a news conference as he fights growing pressure to resign in the 2024 race after his disastrous performance in last week’s debate with Republican Donald Trump.
“We really want to turn the page here,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said of the growing calls for Biden to withdraw from the race. She added that the 81-year-old president had no intention of stepping aside, characterizing his debate failure as evidence simply of “a bad night” while he was sick with a cold.
The White House also held an all-staff meeting Wednesday, billed as a morale boost after the debate and a chance for the senior team to keep the staff focused on governance, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke to The Associated Press anonymously to discuss a private meeting.
Democratic leaders, however, have increasingly shown themselves unconvinced by the White House’s attempts to dismiss Biden’s performance in the confrontation as a snapshot, as he gave halting and nonsensical answers.
Former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi told MSNBC she believes “it’s a legitimate question” whether Biden’s faltering performance is just “an incident or whether this is a condition.”
“If people ask that question, it’s legitimate — for both candidates,” Pelosi said.
Pelosi said she had not spoken to Biden since the debate, but she stressed that the president “is at the top of his game, in the sense that he knows the issues and the stakes.”
Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas became the first Democratic member of Congress to publicly call for Biden’s resignation. He said Biden had to make “the painful and difficult decision” to withdraw, citing the president’s inability to “effectively defend his many accomplishments” in the debate.
Rep. Jared Golden, a moderate Democrat from Maine, said in a local newspaper column Tuesday that the debate “didn’t upset me as much as it did some people because the outcome of this election has been clear to me for months: Even though I don’t plan on voting for him, Donald Trump is going to win. And I’m OK with that.”
Jean-Pierre said Biden, who has not taken questions from reporters since Thursday night’s debate, would meet with Democratic governors and top congressional leaders on Wednesday. And Biden also agreed to appear for an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, which will air Friday. He has trips scheduled to Wisconsin on Friday and Philadelphia on Monday. And he will hold a news conference during the NATO summit in Washington next week.
The president’s accelerated schedule follows a private discussion within Biden’s campaign about what can be done to counter the damaging impact left by last week’s debate.
“We’re going out, across the country. Americans are going to see him with their own eyes,” Jean-Pierre said at a White House briefing, rejecting any suggestion that the president would undergo cognitive tests or provide additional information about his medical condition.
When asked if the president had a degenerative disease or dementia, Jean-Pierre said, “No. And I hope you ask the other guy the same question,” she said, referring to Trump, who is 78, who once challenged Biden to a cognitive test, only to confuse in the next sentence who was administering the test to him.
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Associated Press editors Stephen Groves and Zeke Miller contributed to this approach.
