President Joe Biden opened his press conference, carried across networks, by giving no signal that he is planning on exiting the presidential race.
“I’m in this to complete the job I started,” Biden told reporters.
That said, Biden did make a verbal gaffe as he started — referring to Vice President Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump.” But he tried to assuage concerns over polling by pointing to other incumbent presidents who have trailed even later in the campaign.
“The idea that senators and congressmen running for office worry about the ticket is not unusual,” Biden said.
“There’s a long way to go in this campaign,” Biden said. “So I’m just going to keep moving.”
Biden started the press conference, held at the site of the NATO summit, by talking of the contrast between his approach to the alliance and that of his rival, Donald Trump. “I made it clear that I will not bow down to Putin,” Biden said.
“America cannot retreat from the world. It must lead the world,” Biden said, while he also touted his administration’s progress on the economy and to secure the border.
The press conference was viewed as a critical moment for his campaign, a test of his performance in an unscripted environment following his dismal debate two weeks ago.
The latter set off an expanding chorus of calls from Democratic donors, supporters and lawmakers for him to drop out of the race, frightened by recent polling showing that rival Donald Trump has opened up a lead in the campaign.
Biden has done 164 press conferences and media interviews, as of June 30, according to figures that presidential scholar Martha Joynt Kumar provided to Axios. That is fewer than his last six predecessors. But Biden has done 588 smaller Q&A sessions with reporters, compared to Trump with 664 but far more than Barack Obama with just 103.
The debate performance quickly triggered calls for the president to follow up with an unscripted news conference, to show that Biden had the agility to handle an unscripted and unpredictable environment given so many of his appearances have been via Teleprompter or heavily orchestrated. But in the time since the debate, many Hollywood donors and supporters have only grown more anxious, despite the campaign’s efforts to assure them that they have a path to victory.
Incredibly highly anticipated, Biden’s first solo press conference since last November even saw Fox News beforehand broadcast aides and others setting up the presidential lectern and checking color balances on-screen – a potential first. It’s nothing new for Biden to be running late for official events and speeches. However, in a bit of an odd turn for a campaign that is supposedly trying to get back on track, the late start to the presser gave critics and pundits over 40 minutes of dead TV air to fill with one barbed comment after another.
“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the fate of the world hangs in the balance,” Rachel Maddow said on MSNBC. On CNN, Erin Burnett wondered if Biden was so damaged that no matter how well the press conference went “every night would be Groundhog Day.”
At the end of the NATO Summit this week, Thursday’s event comes as the president mistakenly called President Volodymyr Zelenskyy by the name of scorned Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The gaffe by the long-time gaffe prone Biden couldn’t have come at a worst time, with the knives out in both GOP and Democratic circles. Former actor Zelenskyy tried to save the moment by quipping “I’m better” as the president acknowledged his mistake by saying he was “so focused on beating Putin.”
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