Joe Biden has said on a radio show that he made a “mistake” in last week’s debate with Donald Trump, but he has vowed to stay in the election race even though a series of polls show him now trailing the former president by about six points.
In two interviews with local radio stations in the crucial states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania on Wednesday, the president urged voters to judge him based on his time in the White House.
“I had a bad night,” Biden told Milwaukee radio host Earl Ingram. “And the fact is, I blew it. I made a mistake. That’s 90 minutes on stage — look what I’ve done in three and a half years.”
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Biden pointed Ingram’s predominantly black audience to accomplishments during his presidency that had increased representation.
“I have chosen a Black woman to be my vice president. I have appointed the first Black woman to be a Supreme Court justice,” Biden said. “I have appointed more Black judges, more Black women judges, than any other president in American history combined.”
Biden also attacked Trump over comments the former president made about black workers during their televised debate a week ago, when Trump said immigrant workers could take away 20 million 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,” Biden said.
A number of polls conducted after last week’s debate, in which Biden at times lost his thread or stopped responding altogether, show that this hurt Biden with voters.
Trump has a six-point lead nationwide, 48% to 42%, according to a Wall Street Journal poll released Thursday. Eighty percent of respondents say the president is too old to run for a second term, up seven percentage points from February.
It also found that Biden is viewed positively by 34% of voters, and negatively by 63%. Fewer 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 Wednesday, also showed a six-point lead for Trump, up from three points a week earlier. Among registered voters, Trump led by eight points.
According to the Journal poll, a third of respondents, including 31% of independents — a key group of American voters on which the election could hinge — said the debate made them more likely to vote for Trump, while just 10% said they would vote for Biden.
A similar share of Democrats and Republicans — about three-quarters — said they thought Biden was too old to run. Two-thirds of Democrats said they would replace Biden with another candidate.
Biden will hold rallies in both states over the weekend. He will also give an interview to ABC News on Friday, and then to Good Morning America over the weekend.
The president himself reportedly told a key ally that the next few days of public appearances will be a major test of whether he can successfully make a public case for his reelection. The White House has disputed this report.
The interview and the event push come amid mounting speculation about whether more elected Democrats will call on him to step aside: so far, only two members of Congress have done so. Potential replacement candidates including Kamala Harris, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and California Gov. Gavin Newsom have voiced strong support for Biden’s reelection.
In a call to campaign staff on Wednesday, he reportedly said, “I’m the nominee of the Democratic Party. Nobody’s pushing me out. I’m not running.” In a fundraising email after the call, Biden said, “Let me say this as clearly and simply as I can: I’m running.”
Earlier this year, Trump held a lead of about two percentage points in the polls, but his lead appeared to be shrinking and the candidates appeared to be neck and neck heading into the debate.
