Donald Trump claimed he has “nothing to do” with Project 2025, a conservative political roadmap to roll back rights and progressive policies, even though the project was created by people close to him.
There has been a range of reactions to Joe Biden’s ABC interview, which aired one week after his debate performance fueled calls for him to exit the race.
David Axelrod, a former advisor to Barack Obama, said Biden is “rightfully proud of his record” but “dangerously out-of-touch with the concerns people have about his capacities”:
The president is rightfully proud of his record. But he is dangerously out-of-touch with the concerns people have about his capacitiies moving forward and his standing in this race. Four years ago at this time, he was 10 points ahead of Trump. Today, he is six points behind.
Anyone who tells you they believe Joe Biden can serve a full four years as president, fully competent and engaged, 24/7, for four more years, is lying to you. They are lying to you.
Obviously Trump would be worse. Obviously. But it would still be a lie to say the above.
A New York Times White House reporter says Biden’s circle sees the interview as “enough to keep him in the fight for now” and that insiders described it as a “turn in his direction with more to do”:
The outside world will discuss, but within Biden’s circle, this appearance is seen as enough to keep him in the fight for now, per those inside of it who watched it and knew he had limited time to make a case. Described as a turn in his direction with more to do.
As of Friday evening, four House Democrats had publicly called on Biden to withdraw his candidacy, while others have issued statements questioning his viability to defeat Trump. Other Democratic leaders have signaled they would support vice president Kamala Harris if she took over the ticket. And it was also reported Friday that Senator Mark Warner was organizing behind the scenes to call for the president’s exit – a move that Biden dismissed in his ABC interview.
STEPHANOPOULOS: The heart of your case against Donald Trump is that he's only out for himself...How do you respond to critics who say that by staying in the race, you're doing the same thing?
BIDEN: Oh, come on. I don't think those critics know what they're talking about. pic.twitter.com/pcHoLk7IsE
Joe Biden’s highly anticipated interview with ABC News, his first post-debate sit-down with the media, ended after 22 minutes. Some highlights and initial takeaways:
-There was no major gaffe or stumble akin to his calamitous debate performance. Biden rambled and repeated himself in some of his responses, but there was no significant moment of an embarrassing misstatement or lost train of thought or moment of confusion.
-Biden forcefully rejected his increasingly alarming poll numbers and low approval ratings and the calls for him to step aside. He repeatedly suggested that the polls were not accurate and that he expected to beat Trump in November. His overall refusal to acknowledge the dire warnings that he could be defeated could play poorly with voters and people in his party increasingly concerned about his viability.
-Biden repeatedly defended his record in the White House, listing off a wide range of achievements, including taking on pharmaceutical companies, improvements in the economy and the expansion of Nato.
-Biden insisted the debate performance was a one-off mistake due to being tired and sick that evening. He suggested his stamina and cognitive abilities remained unchanged, and he declined to commit to undergoing some kind of independent psychological evaluation.
-Biden said he would withdraw from the race if God told him to do so, but declined to entertain hypothetical question about whether he would step down if party leaders such as Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer asked him to.
Joe Biden’s interview with George Stephanopoulos has ended after roughly 23 minutes.
The conversation, tense at times, ended with Biden remaining defiant about his position in the race and repeatedly dismissing Stephanopoulos’s questions about his dire polling and the growing backlash within his party.
Toward the end of the conversation, Stephanopoulos asked, “If you stay in and Trump is elected, and everything you’re warning about comes to pass, how will you feel in January?”
Biden responded, “As long as I gave it my all and did as good a job as I know I could do, that’s what this is about.” Biden ended by saying he was the best person for the job and that people should judge his performance at the Nato conference in Washington DC next week: “Come listen. See what they say.”
Stephanopoulos asks Joe Biden: “If you can be convinced that you cannot defeat Donald Trump, will you stand down?
Biden responds that if the Lord Almighty tells him that, he might.
Stephanopoulos then asks if Democratic leaders, such as Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, told him to step aside, would he consider withdrawing?
Biden says he’s spoken to those leaders and they want him to keep running. Biden declines to entertain further hypotheticals about being asked to step down.
Despite repeated questions pressing him about his bad polling and growing discontent, Biden is not changing his tune.
“I’ve never seen a president with 36% approval get re-elected,” the ABC host adds.
Biden responds that he doesn’t believe that number.
Joe Biden calls race a 'tossup' but says he is best qualified to beat Trump
George Stephanopoulos: “Are you being honest with yourself about your ability to defeat Donald Trump?”
Joe Biden: “Yes, yes, yes, yes … I remember them telling me the same thing in 2020, I can’t win. … They said in 2023, all the tough races we’re not going to win.”
Stephanopoulos: “Is it going to be much tougher to win in 2024?”
Biden: “Not when you’re running against a pathological liar … All the pollsters I talk to tell me it’s a tossup … I don’t think anyone is more qualified to be president and win this race than me.”
The George Stephanopoulos interview with Joe Biden is going in circles. The president has repeatedly cited his record, and the ABC News host has repeatedly asked whether he’s up to the task for the next few years.
Biden says he’s in good shape and not more frail than he once was.
Joe Biden said his doctors checked on him after the debate and told him he was “exhausted”. Biden continued: “I have medical doctors trailing me everywhere I go. I have an ongoing assessment of what I’m doing. They don’t hesitate to tell me if something is wrong.”
Stephanopoulos questioned whether Biden would undergo a cognitive test.
Biden responded, “I get a full neurological test every day.”
The president declined to commit to an independent cognitive assessment.
Full Joe Biden ABC interview to begin airing shortly
Joe Biden’s full ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos, his first sit-down media appearance since his disastrous debate,will start airing shortly. Follow along here as we post key excerpts and takeaways from the conversation.
In an short preview clip released earlier today, Biden brushed off concerns about his debate performance, saying he was feeling sick and exhausted, but that there was no reason to be concerned about any more serious condition. He rambled a bit in his responses in this excerpt. A transcript shared by ABC News included this answer to the question of whether he knew how badly the debate was going on:
Yeah, look. The whole way I prepared, nobody’s fault, mine. Nobody’s fault but mine. I, I prepared what I usually would do sittin’ down as I did come back with foreign leaders or National Security Council for explicit detail. And I realized – partway through that, you know, all – I get quoted the New York Times had me down, ten points before the debate, nine now, or whatever the hell it is. The fact of the matter is, what I looked at is that he also lied 28 times. I couldn’t – I mean, the way the debate ran, not – my fault, nobody else’s fault, no one else’s fault.”
The interview is airing at a critical time for Biden as he is facing escalating pressure to withdraw his candidacy. Biden gave a defiant, energetic campaign speech earlier today, but it has not stopped questions over whether he is a viable candidate to face Donald Trump.
Biden and his representatives have repeatedly said this week that he was not considering dropping out.
Fourth Congress member calls for Biden to exit the race
A fourth Democratic Congress member has called for Joe Biden to withdraw from the race, Reuters reports.
Mike Quigley, who represents Illinois, said on MSNBC:
"Mr President, your legacy is set. We owe you the greatest debt of gratitude. The only thing that you can do now to cement that for all time and prevent utter catastrophe is to step down and let someone else do this.”
Lloyd Doggett, Raul Grijalva and Seth Moulton, all House Democratic lawmakers, have also called for him to end his reelection campaign.
Biden says he's 'completely ruling out' withdrawing from the race
Reporters briefly asked Joe Biden questions in front of Air Force One just now, with one journalist first asking him if he was going to drop out of the race.
“I’m completely ruling that out,” he responded. “I’ve beaten [Trump] before and I’ve gotten more done than any president has.”
As reporters further questioned him on his viability, he criticized the media, saying, “You’ve been wrong about everything, so far. You were wrong about 2020. You were wrong about 2022, ‘We were going to get wiped out.’ Remember the ‘red wave’? You were wrong about 2023 … So look, we’ll see.”
Biden also downplayed the calls for him to step aside: “All those governors said stay in the race,” he said, referring to his meeting this week with Democratic governors, after which many of them released statements of general support for Biden. When a journalist asked about Massachusetts governor Maura Healey, who published a statement today breaking from the group and raising doubts about him remaining the nominee, Biden noted that she didn’t say anything during his meeting.
Biden also committed to doing another debate: “I hope he’ll debate me. I’m committing now [to debating] absolutely.”
Asked about reports that Democratic Senator Mark Warner wants him to withdraw, Biden responded, “He’s the only one.”
Asked about Sen. Mark Warner wanting him to step aside, President Biden responded: “He’s the only one”
Watch the first clip from Joe Biden’s George Stephanopoulos interview here:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Was this [the debate] a bad episode or the sign of a more serious condition?
BIDEN: It was a bad episode. No indication of any serious condition. I was exhausted. I didn't listen to my instincts in terms of preparing, and I had a bad night. pic.twitter.com/ONIGZEfKQU
There was no major news or surprises in this first excerpt. Echoing comments he and other officials have made since last week’s debate, Biden brushed off concerns about his performance, saying he was exhausted and sick, but that it was not a sign of any more “serious condition”.
ABC airs excerpt of Biden interview: 'I had a bad night'
ABC has aired an excerpt from its interview with Joe Biden with George Stephanopoulos, which will air in full at 8pm EST. The excerpt featured Stephanopoulos asking the president about his poor debate performance and whether it was a “bad episode or a sign of a more serious condition”. Biden responded:
It was a bad episode [not] a serious condition … I was exhausted. I didn’t listen to my instincts in terms of preparing … I had a bad night .. I was sick, I was feeling terrible … The doctor did a test to see whether or not I had some infection or virus, I didn’t. I just had a really bad cold.”
Biden also pointed out that Trump repeatedly lied during the debate. After Stephanopoulos pointed out that Biden seemed to do poorly from the very start of the debate, the president said, “I just had a bad night.”
Warning signs of Joe Biden’s decline were hiding in plain sight well before last month’s calamitous US presidential debate performance against Donald Trump.
But Biden had the perfect cover: a long history of verbal slips and other blunders that made it hard to blame his age alone. “I am a gaffe machine,” he admitted in December 2018 when asked about potential liabilities of his election campaign.
He also medical experts on his side. In 2021 Dr Kevin O’Connor, the president’s physician, pronounced Biden “a healthy, vigorous 78-year-old male who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency”.
Critics say there was a conspiracy of silence at the White House, however. The 36 press conferences that Biden had given by the end of June were fewer than any president in the same timeframe since Ronald Reagan.
Biden’s team came down hard on reporters who questioned whether the oldest president in American history – now 81 – was still fully capable of doing the job. Journalists also wanted to avoid the accusation of ageism or that they were helping to elect Trump.
“It is simply astounding for the entire country, including its most seasoned reporters, to be as shocked as everyone was by the ugly and painful reality of Biden’s debate performance,” Jill Abramson, former executive editor of the New York Times, wrote on the Semafor website this week.
While it was a “super hard story to report”, she said it could have been done. Instead, Abramson said, the American press failed in its duty to hold those in power accountable. Here are some of the dots that, with the benefit of hindsight, could have been joined sooner:
History may record them as eight days that sunk a presidency, or at least the rockiest road to a convention in living memory – a week that has left Joe Biden’s re-election bid hanging by a thread.
Here’s a timeline of the week that left Biden’s re-election bid hanging by a thread:
