WASHINGTON — In recent conversations with aides, family members and allies outside the White House, President Joe Biden has vacillated between acceptance and defiance in the face of the seismic shift in his political standing within his own party, according to four people familiar with the matter.
In some discussions, Biden has acknowledged that the blowback from his debate performance last week may grow too large to overcome, while in others he’s been completely dismissive of any notion that he might walk away from his re-election campaign, these people said.
Some members of the president’s family — particularly first lady Jill Biden and their son Hunter Biden — are urging him to make changes to his staff and are increasingly conveying their views on his campaign’s strategy in an attempt to resuscitate his flailing campaign, three people familiar with the matter said.
The president’s sister, Valerie Owens, is traveling to Washington, D.C. on Thursday to join other family members at the White House for the July 4 holiday, but she will also have face-to-face meetings about her brother’s campaign, according to a person familiar with her plans.
Biden family members have privately pointed fingers at some of the president’s longtime aides over his disastrous debate. They have discussed whether the president should fire senior White House adviser Anita Dunn, for instance, and possibly even her husband, Bob Bauer, who serves as Biden’s personal lawyer, two people familiar with the matter said.
Dunn and Bauer, who are married, were early backers of Biden’s 2020 campaign after showing support for him running in 2016, which he ultimately declined to do. They were among the more than a dozen Biden aides who were involved in days of preparing the president for last week’s debate, with Dunn playing a moderator and Bauer playing former President Donald Trump in mock debate sessions. For more than a year, both have drawn the ire of members of the Biden family over their views that Hunter Biden should maintain a lower profile in his approach to his legal troubles.
White House chief of staff Jeff Zients denied there have been discussions about ousting Dunn or Bauer.
“The president and first lady have full confidence in their team, including Anita and Bob,” Zients said in a statement. “There is absolutely no truth to these unfounded and insulting rumors.”
A senior Democrat added: “The family is scared. These advisers are incredibly loyal and doing their jobs. This is unfounded.”
A Biden aide said the president has told advisers he does not fault the team that prepared him for the debate for his performance.
Members of the president’s family have been among the loudest voices rejecting any suggestion he drop out of the race, according to people familiar with the private discussions. Biden, too, is not inclined to withdraw, which he has stressed in public appearances. But he is weighing his own instincts to stay and fight — and his family’s reinforcement of those instincts — against the mounting calls for him to step aside and data showing the damage his debate performance did to his re-election prospects.
“He can see that there is potentially no real path,” one of these people said. “But he’s being pushed.”
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement, “President Biden has been consistent: he is staying in the race.”
The president began engaging with leaders in the Democratic Party over the past few days as calls for him to step aside grew and anxiety among Biden allies escalated.
Former President Barack Obama’s counsel during a phone call this week, however, did not sit well with Biden, who still harbors resentment toward his former boss for advising him not to run for the White House in 2016.
Obama has privately questioned the notion that he could influence Biden on such a personal decision if party leaders determined the president needed to be convinced to exit the race, according to two people familiar with his comments.
“President Biden appreciates President Obama’s advice and support for his leadership,” Bates, the White House spokesperson, said in a statement.
When asked for comment, a spokesperson for Obama pointed to his recent public comments expressing support for Biden and noting that he, too, had a bad debate when running for re-election in 2012.
Biden initially felt energized to press ahead with his campaign the day after the debate, buoyed by a Friday afternoon rally in North Carolina where he received a rousing reception from the crowd, according to two people familiar with the matter. As the weekend wore on, however, the gravity of what transpired on the debate stage in front of the country sunk in for Biden, this person said.
His mood shifted. He was deeply wounded, and embarrassed, by a disastrous debate performance the entire world saw, NBC News has reported.
The question facing him morphed beyond just whether he could survive outside political pressure to step aside, to include whether he could get to a place inside himself where he moved past the humiliation of the debate to have the confidence to get back in the ring and throw punches in a bruising, gloves-off campaign.
“His whole life, when Joe Biden has been knocked down, he stands back up,” Bates, the White House spokesperson, said in a statement.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), who hosted Biden at a fundraiser on Tuesday, said the president did not appear like a candidate deterred.
“He seemed strong. He didn’t seem meek, or cowed. He didn’t seem like a broken man. He didn’t seem like somebody in crisis,” Beyer said. “Just very confident and very much like, ‘I’m going to win this thing.’”
NBC News has reported that Hunter Biden intensely wants his father to stay in this race. And Jill Biden has been adamant that her husband would not give up.
Gathered with Biden family members at Camp David last weekend, she pointed to all they have endured since Joe Biden decided to run for the White House — including attacks on Hunter Biden and criminal investigations into their son that have publicly exposed some of the family’s darkest and most painful moments — to make the point that now was the time to fight, two people familiar with the conversations said. Our son could go to jail because of this, she has said, referring to Hunter Biden’s recent conviction on felony gun charges.
While Jill Biden was campaigning for her husband on Tuesday in Pennsylvania with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Rep. Nanette Barragan (D-Calif.) said the president’s debate performance didn’t come up. Barragan told NBC News that the first lady was “upbeat, always smiling and engaged with us.”
“I couldn’t see anything that would tell me that something was happening and something else was going on,” she said.
Immediately after the debate, Biden family members sought to figure out what happened during his debate preparations with senior staff at Camp David, according to people familiar with the discussions. They wanted to know who was responsible for apparently loading the president up with numbers and statistics rather than coaching him to speak from his heart, these people said.
They have specifically questioned the decision to have Bauer play Trump in mock debate sessions when there were outside suggestions for someone else taking on the role, which the president’s top aides rejected. A person close to Ron Klain, Biden’s former chief of staff who led his debate preparations, said Klain asked Bauer to play Trump as he had during 2020 mock debate sessions.
Now, the family conversations are focused on how to rebuild Biden’s standing and continue his campaign, while the president’s closest aides are helming a sweeping outreach effort to keep key Democrats from breaking with him.
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