Election Updates: Democrats use the weekend to help Biden get back on track after debate.
President Biden is at the Camp David presidential retreat this weekend for a family gathering. There has been a lot of scrutiny around it after his debate performance, but the gathering was planned before the debate and it is not clear what will be discussed.
Steve Bannon, a close adviser to former President Donald J. Trump who is about to go to prison for contempt of Congress, said on ABC News that the former F.B.I. officials James Comey and Andrew McCabe, the former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley and former Defense Secretary Mark Esper “ought to be worried” because they will be investigated if Trump is elected again.
The Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who has used violent rhetoric like “put their heads on pikes” against political opponents, said on ABC News that death threats were simply a routine part of being a public figure. “Do you think I don’t get death threats and have security all the time?” he said. “That comes when you play at the highest levels. It just comes.”
Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota distanced himself on NBC News from a comment he made in 2016 saying that “America was an unsafe place for women before Roe v. Wade.” He said that he now believed overturning Roe was the right decision and that he didn’t think doing so made women unsafe because “care has evolved.”
Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, a contender to be former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate, defended Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, comparing them inaccurately to past efforts by Democrats, who pursued only legal challenges and conceded. “Donald Trump, at the end of his term on Jan. 20, left the White House. We had a smooth transition,” he said on NBC News, and waved Jan. 6 aside when Kristen Welker pointed it out.
Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland repeatedly insisted that President Biden’s “tough night” during Thursday’s debate should not determine his fate. Pressed on why the president struggled, he said, “Well, I think that the president had a difficult night just like every single one of us do.” Asked whether he would pursue the Democratic nomination for president if Biden dropped out, Moore replied: “I will not. And Joe Biden is not going to take himself out of this race, nor should he.”
Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia jabbed at fellow Democrats who are panicking over President Biden’s debate performance. “Listen, if they weren’t engaged in a little bit of hand-wringing, they wouldn’t be Democrats,” he said.
NBC News asked Senator Raphael Warnock, Democrat of Georgia, whether President Biden should drop out. “Oh, absolutely not,” he said. Warnock, a pastor, added: “I can tell you that there have been more than a few Sundays when I wish I had preached a better sermon. But after the sermon was over, it was my job to embody the message, to show up for the people that I serve. And that’s what Joe Biden has been doing.”
Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, a Republican widely considered to be a top choice as a potential Trump VP pick, evaded a question about whether Trump would debate Biden in September. “Donald Trump is going to do what’s in the best interest of his campaign because him winning is what’s in the best interest of the country. So I’ll let Donald Trump make the decision about whether he’s going to do the September debate.”
Jen Psaki, President Biden’s former White House press secretary, said on ABC News that Biden’s debate performance was “terrible” but that a contested convention, if he were to drop out of the race, would be disastrous. “You have a group of inside Democrats — not the American public, by the way, who decided to nominate Joe Biden — selecting who the nominee is,” she said. “And then after that process, somebody is spit out of that process and a lot of people are angry.”
Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman dismissed any calls for Biden to drop out during an interview with Fox News Sunday. ”I don’t know if there’s a value in any of those things,” he said, pointing to his own shaky debate performance in 2022 against his Republican opponent. “Everybody was calling that that was the end of my career,” he said, criticizing members of his party for “wetting the bed.”
Reince Priebus, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, called staying in the race “just all downside for Joe Biden.” “This is not a bad debate night,” he said on ABC News. “This was an incoherent, almost impossible mess.”
Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware and a co-chairman of President Biden’s campaign, acknowledged on ABC News that his debate performance was “weak” but said, “I think side by side, Donald Trump had a horrifying debate performance where yes, he spoke plainly, but what he said was lie after lie after lie.”
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi argued on CNN that voters would pay more attention to Trump’s false statements than to Biden’s stumbles. “The reaction to the lies of Donald Trump is something that maybe TV isn’t focusing on, but people are,” she said. “And to have a debate where you have to spend half your time negating what he said because he knows nothing about the truth — one side of the screen you have integrity, the other side you have dishonesty.”
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic former House speaker, defended President Biden on CNN. “Let us not make a judgment about a presidency on one debate. Let’s talk about what it means to people in their lives,” she said, adding that she expected voters to care more about issues like abortion, the economy and climate change, and noting that former President Donald J. Trump made numerous false statements during the debate.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said of President Biden in a CNN interview: “He’s a decent man. He’s a failed president. He is compromised. That’s the story line here. That’s what the world saw, a compromised president.”
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, defended former President Donald J. Trump’s refusal — in the debate and on many other occasions — to commit to accepting the election results. “What are you supposed to say? ‘Yeah, I’ll accept it no matter if I thought I was cheated?’” he said.
Representative Jim Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, appearing on CNN, criticized former President Donald J. Trump’s comments at the debate about “Black jobs.” Clyburn said that implied to him that Trump thinks there are “certain jobs for Black people and certain jobs for white people.”
Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, a prominent Biden supporter, said on CNN: “I do not believe that Joe Biden has a problem leading for the next four years because he’s done a great job of leading for the last three and a half years. I always say that the best predictor of future behavior is past performance.” He argued that what happened at the debate was “preparation overload.”
In New Jersey last night, at the home of Gov. Phil Murphy, President Biden and his surrogates continued to keep the focus on Donald Trump and his agenda. His campaign has argued the bad debate will not make a difference in battleground states. Later, a Biden official criticized an NBC News article saying that Biden was expected to discuss his campaign today with family at Camp David. “It’s been on the schedule for weeks,” the official said, according to a White House pool report. “There is nothing more to it.”
Top Democrats scrambled on Sunday to defend President Biden and dismiss concerns about his candidacy that surfaced after he struggled to answer policy questions in Thursday’s debate and failed to make an aggressive case against former President Donald J. Trump.
The surge of surrogates followed a concerted effort by Mr. Biden and his team over the weekend to reassure anxious donors, party leaders and supporters who have raised questions about whether he should continue his candidacy.
“Listen, if they weren’t engaged in a little bit of hand-wringing, they wouldn’t be Democrats,” Senator Raphael Warnock, Democrat of Georgia, said on NBC News.
In interviews on several TV networks, Mr. Warnock and other Democrats offered versions of the same argument: that Mr. Biden should be judged not on his performance in a 90-minute debate but on his record as president over the past three and a half years, and that voters should give more weight to Mr. Trump’s numerous false statements in the debate and to his continued indications that he would not accept an election loss.
“I think that the president had a difficult night, just like every single one of us do,” Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland said on CBS News, adding, “Joe Biden is not going to take himself out of this race, nor should he.”
Mr. Warnock and Mr. Moore were among a string of high-profile Democrats who spoke out in a bid to bolster Mr. Biden’s position within the party, including Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina; Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the former House speaker; and Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Fetterman, in an interview on Fox News, pointed to his own shaky debate performance in 2022 after having a stroke — and also to his subsequent win. “Everybody was calling that, that was the end of my career,” he said, criticizing members of his party for “wetting the bed.”
Mr. Clyburn and Ms. Pelosi, strong and longtime Biden supporters who appeared on CNN, focused less on Mr. Biden’s performance and more on his record as president.
“I do not believe that Joe Biden has a problem leading for the next four years because he’s done a great job of leading for the last three and a half years,” Mr. Clyburn said. He also condemned Mr. Trump’s reference during the debate to “Black jobs,” which he described as an implication that “there are certain jobs for Black people and there are certain jobs for white people.”
Ms. Pelosi urged against making “a judgment about a presidency on one debate.” She also said that she expected voters to care more about abortion rights, the economy and climate change, and added, “The reaction to the lies of Donald Trump is something that maybe TV isn’t focusing on, but people are.”
One of the few Democrats who was open about the concerns was Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland. “There are very honest and serious and rigorous conversations taking place at every level of our party,” Mr. Raskin said on MSNBC, arguing that this was a good thing, standing in contrast with “the nonexistent dialogue and conversation that took place in the Republican Party after Donald Trump’s criminal conviction.”
Republicans on Sunday stayed on offense by attacking Mr. Biden’s debate performance and questioning his fitness for office, while also defending Mr. Trump’s claims on the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, a contender to be Mr. Trump’s running mate who appeared on NBC News, pushed back against the Democrats’ defense of Mr. Biden’s cognitive abilities, saying: “All of America saw it. And you know who else saw it? Our adversaries saw it. Putin saw it, Xi saw it, the ayatollah saw it.”
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a onetime Trump critic turned enthusiastic supporter, made the same case against Mr. Biden, with whom he served in the Senate.
“He is compromised,” Mr. Graham said on CNN. “That’s the story line here. That’s what the world saw — a compromised president.”
At the same time, Republicans struggled at points to defend Mr. Trump’s own debate performance, in which he spoke more clearly than Mr. Biden but made many false claims and indicated that he might refuse to accept the election results if he loses again, as he did in 2020.
Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, another candidate to be Mr. Trump’s running mate, accused journalists of not fact-checking Mr. Biden. “There was this 24-hour period where effectively everyone was honest that there was an incredible contrast between Donald Trump’s energy and command of the facts and Joe Biden’s obvious inability to do the job as president,” he said on CBS News. “And now, of course, we’ve transitioned to this new media cycle where folks are trying to run cover.”
Mr. Burgum inaccurately compared Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election to the efforts of past Democrats who pursued only legal challenges and conceded their losses. “Donald Trump, at the end of his term on Jan. 20, left the White House,” he said on NBC. “We had a smooth transition.”
When the host, Kristen Welker, pointed out that Trump supporters’ storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to try to stop the certification of the election “wasn’t exactly a smooth transition,” Mr. Burgum said, “Well, I think we have to say that there was a smooth transition.”
Mr. Graham, on CNN, said Mr. Trump was right not to commit to accepting the results.
“What are you supposed to say?” Mr. Graham asked. “‘Yeah, I’ll accept it no matter if I thought I was cheated?’”
Katie Rogers covers the Biden administration and the Biden family and reported from Washington. She is the author of a book on first ladies.
President Biden knew immediately after stepping off the stage in Atlanta on Thursday night that the debate had gone wrong. In those first stricken moments after a raspy, rambling and at times incoherent performance, he turned to his wife, Jill Biden.
Whatever was going to happen next in Mr. Biden’s last presidential race, after perhaps the worst moment of his long political life, was always going to come down to her. His wife of 47 years had entered his life all those decades ago, reluctant to get into politics but fully embracing his dreams and his belief that he would one day reach the White House.
Now, her 81-year-old husband looked at her after a disastrous 90 minutes onstage.
The first lady’s message to him was clear: They’d been counted out before, she was all in, and he — they — would stay in the race. Her thinking, according to people close to her, was that it was a bad night. And bad nights end.
“To say they’ve been in foxholes together doesn’t even begin to explain their bond,” said Elizabeth Alexander, the first lady’s communications director, who has been with Mr. Biden since his Senate days.
So Dr. Biden spent the 24 hours after the debate putting her decades as a political spouse to the test, projecting confidence and normalcy while effusively praising her husband. But, like the president, she is an intuitive political messenger who can sense the mood of a crowd. She knows that along with the cheering supporters, there are legions of people suddenly accusing her of forcing an old man to put one weary foot in front of the other.
If Mr. Biden were to seriously consider departing the race, allowing a younger candidate to replace him, the first lady would be the most important figure — other than the president himself — in reaching that decision.
“Jill is the final and most important voice. She knows him and loves him with a passion. She also knows everything about him. Most big decisions are made with Valerie and Jill in the end,” said John Morgan, one of Mr. Biden’s top donors, referring to the president’s younger sister, who has run nearly all of his political campaigns.
Indeed, as major Democratic Party donors connected Friday, by text, by phone or in person, one of the most immediate questions they asked one another was whether any of them knew how to get a meeting or a conversation with the first lady.
After nearly a half-century in politics, the Bidens view themselves as long-game people. And right now, neither wants the story of the president’s long political career — one defined by tragedy, resilience and unceasing ambition — to end on a stage in Atlanta, across the podium from former President Donald J. Trump, a man they both revile.
“He wants to win and she wants that for him, and for the country,” Ms. Alexander said. “She’s his biggest supporter and champion, because she believes in him, and she fears for the future of our country if it goes the other way.”
In front of supporters on Friday, the first lady embraced the talking points espoused by Democratic Party leaders, including the vice president, Kamala Harris, that Mr. Biden’s bad performance did not erase years of successful legislating.
“As Joe said earlier today, he’s not a young man,” Dr. Biden told a group of donors assembled in Manhattan on Friday afternoon, her third stop since leaving Atlanta. “After last night’s debate, he said: ‘You know, Jill, I don’t know what happened. I didn’t feel that great.’ I said, ‘Look, Joe, we are not going to let 90 minutes define the four years that you’ve been president.’”
Dr. Biden understood that the debate night had amounted to a serious misstep. The president had needed to walk into the debate hall and address concerns about his age. Instead, he walked onstage after six days of preparations and mock debates at Camp David and had little other than a raspy voice to show for it. (The White House said he had a cold.)
She listened as Mr. Trump mocked him. “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence,” Mr. Trump said when Mr. Biden blundered an answer on immigration. “I don’t think he knows what he said either.”
She listened as the former president attacked Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden’s son whom she had raised since childhood and had stood by during a recent trial on gun charges, sitting front row in the courtroom as the worst moments of his addiction were recounted for the world to see.
And she watched as her husband looked wide-eyed and slack-jawed as Mr. Trump went on, angrily absorbing what was happening but largely unable to hit back.
Afterward, Dr. Biden held hands with the president, who walked gingerly down the stairs. The moment quickly went viral. At a campaign-organized watch party the Bidens visited shortly after the debate, she praised her husband for his performance. But critics elsewhere saw her giving him a virtual pat on the head for simply making it through the debate.
“You answered every question, you knew all the facts,” she said. “And what did Trump do?”
“Lie!” the crowd shouted.
Suddenly, a first lady who had skirted major controversies over the past three and a half years found herself in the cross hairs of people who believe she has been trying to hide his diminished faculties.
“What Jill Biden and the Biden campaign did to Joe Biden tonight — rolling him out on stage to engage in a battle of wits while unarmed — is elder abuse, plain and simple,” Representative Harriet M. Hageman, Republican of Wyoming, wrote in a social media post.
The Drudge Report, a prominent conservative-leaning website whose author, Matt Drudge, has soured on Mr. Trump, ran an unflattering photo of the Bidens on Friday with the headline “CRUEL JILL CLINGS TO POWER.”
The first lady and her advisers have long noticed similar claims on conservative websites, and are aware that they are leaking into the mainstream. Ms. Alexander said Dr. Biden views her “amorphous” role as “an act of service, rather than some mythical power grab invented by the dark corners of the internet.”
She added that the first lady sometimes felt hamstrung by the demands of the role, one rife with expectations and hidden trip wires.
“You have to be supportive, but not so supportive that your motives are questioned,” Ms. Alexander said, placing much of the blame on the internet, bots and a right-wing machine that fuels “every conspiracy.”
Advisers to the president and first lady downplay the idea that she has the ability to unilaterally pull the plug on the president’s re-election campaign and clear the way for another candidate four months before a presidential election. They acknowledge her unique influence and power in his life, but they say Mr. Biden is in control of his own campaign.
“There’s too much putting this on Jill,” said one of Mr. Biden’s top advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a family dynamic. But as long as Mr. Biden wants to run, advisers say, she will support him.
“When Joe gets knocked down, Joe gets back up,” she told the donors in New York. “And that’s what we’re doing today.”
Reporting from Chesapeake, Va.
Campaign Notebook
The day after President Biden melted down in Thursday’s prime-time debate, Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia stood beside former President Donald J. Trump on a farm in Chesapeake, gushing.
“This is the best Trump rally ever!”
In the past, when it suited him, Mr. Youngkin kept his distance from Mr. Trump and his unpredictable behavior.
Not now. Not with all this winning afoot.
“Hello, Virginia,” Mr. Trump cooed as he took the stage before thousands of his supporters in what Republicans increasingly see as a winnable state. “Did anybody watch a thing called the debate?” He roared: “That was a big one.”
On the surface, the rally in Chesapeake was a quick-turn victory lap after the debate and before the 2024 race hits a higher gear.
“Democrats are in a lot of trouble, so I feel pretty good today,” said Jason Alter, 35, a dentist from Miami.
But beneath the jubilation, there was a low-grade panic stirring. It was the kind of panic that one sometimes feels when everything in life seems to be going … a little too well.
Throughout Mr. Trump’s comeback campaign, his supporters have told anyone who would listen that Mr. Biden was nothing more than the tool of a shadowy establishment that would, at the right moment, pull him to insert a more formidable candidate. Now, as they see it, this exact plot is playing out before the eyes of the nation.
“We all suspected it," said Phil Capron, 40, a Virginia Beach resident and real estate investor. “And now that’s the official narrative that every major outlet is running with.”
The suspicion flowed Friday. “They did this to get him out,” said Tara Silvasy, 55, a contractor for FEMA.
But who is the ‘they’? “The party,” she said, simply.
Never one to miss out on a spidery conspiracy theory, Mr. Trump seemed as freaked out as any of his supporters about what is now possibly, perhaps, underway.
“Many people are saying that after last night’s performance, Joe Biden is leaving the race,” he said from the stage, followed by scattered, seemingly confused applause. “The fact is, I don’t really believe that,” he continued, “because he does better in the polls than any of the Democrats they’re talking about. You’ve seen that, Glenn?”
Mr. Trump spent the next few minutes explaining to his followers why the alternatives to Mr. Biden are actually weaker. He said that Gov. Gavin Newsom “can’t run California,” and the crowd booed. He mentioned Vice President Kamala Harris and the crowd booed louder. “It might’ve been Joe Biden’s single best decision, putting her vice president, because nobody wants that. I’d be very happy with that.”
Then he said, “Have they polled Michelle Obama? She polls very badly. She polls terribly.” The crowd went oddly still. Nobody seemed to be buying that one — least of all Mr. Trump, even as the words were coming out of his own mouth. “It’s hard to believe,” he said, pausing. “But crooked Joe Biden polls better than those people.”
This was all somewhat undercut by the fact that, during a different part of his same speech, Mr. Trump had told them that pollsters were never to be trusted.
“Michelle Obama would be an interesting choice,” mused Mr. Capron, wearing an “Alex Jones was right” T-shirt. “I actually think she would garner a lot of support. A lot of people really liked the Obama years.”
Ms. Silvasy said, “Unfortunately, I think it’s going to be Gavin Newsom.”
Mr. Alter, the Miami dentist, feared the same. “Yes, that would make me very nervous. I hope Joe is too stubborn and he just stays on the ticket and he thinks he can win.”
What got Mr. Trump the loudest applause Friday had nothing to do with the debate or Mr. Biden’s slippage; it was his mention of that day’s Supreme Court decision, which ruled that prosecutors had overstepped in how they charged some members of the pro-Trump mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “Those people have been treated so badly,” Mr. Trump said. “They should be released immediately, the J6 hostages.”
The next morning, Mr. Trump tried doing a little damage control — for his opponent. He posted on Truth Social on Saturday about Mr. Biden, saying “his speech on Friday was better, and he seems to be coming out of his trance.”
But in Chesapeake, he ultimately leveled with his loyalists about the coming battle ahead. “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he finally acknowledged. “I have absolutely no idea.”