A proud Biden says only the ‘Lord Almighty’ can keep him out of the race
President Biden on Friday dismissed concerns about his age, mental acuity and polls that suggested he would lose his reelection bid. In a prime-time interview, he said his sharpness is tested every day as he “runs the world.” He vowed to step down only if “the Lord Almighty” tells him to.
During a 22-minute interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that was broadcast unedited, the 81-year-old Biden said he didn’t need to undergo any neurological or cognitive tests. He said he simply didn’t believe the polls that showed him losing. And when asked how he would feel if former President Donald J. Trump were elected in November, he brushed off the question.
“I think as long as I gave it my all and I did as well as I know I can, that’s what matters,” Biden said in an interview meant to assuage growing concerns about his age after Thursday’s debate. But with a gravelly voice and a defiant tone, there was little indication that the interview would do much to stem the bleeding during the deepest crisis of his long political career.
Biden repeatedly told Stephanopoulos that voters should consider his performance while in office.
“Who can hold NATO together like I can?” he said. “Who can get into a position where I can hold the Pacific Basin in a position where we can at least checkmate China now? Who’s going to do that? Who has the reach?”
Biden repeatedly brushed aside “hypothetical” questions about whether he would step aside for another Democrat if people he respects say he can’t win in the fall.
“Look, I mean, if the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race,’ I would get out of the race, but the Lord Almighty ain’t coming down,” Mr. Biden told Mr. Stephanopoulos. He dismissed Democratic lawmakers’ concerns as overblown.
“Have you ever seen a group, a time where elected officials running for office don’t have a little bit of concern? Have you ever seen that? I haven’t. The same thing happened in 2020,” he said, lowering his voice to mock officials who questioned his campaign. “‘Oh, Biden, I don’t know what he’s going to do. He could take me down.'”
When asked if he really believed he was not trailing Mr. Trump in the race, he said that “all the pollsters I talk to say it’s a tossup — it’s a tossup.” And he said he was willing to take the risk that he was wrong about that.
“I don’t think anyone is better qualified to be president or to win this race than me,” he told Mr Stephanopoulos.
The fact that the president has faced questions about his mental competency underscores the depth of the crisis he has been facing since last week’s debate in Atlanta raised questions about his candidacy. A growing number of donors and several lawmakers have called for him to be pulled from the race.
The president disputed that reality on Friday, insisting that “the vast majority are not where those people are.” And he said no one close to him had suggested that he submit to an independent neurological exam.
“No. Nobody said I had to do that. They said I’m good,” he said. “Look, I have a cognitive test every day. I’ve had tests every day, everything I do. Not just in my campaign, but I run the world. And that sounds like hyperbole, but we are the essential nation in the world.”
Biden agreed to the ABC interview — one of the few he has given to news organizations during his presidency — and traveled to Madison, Wisconsin, for a campaign rally in hopes that a strong performance could salvage his floundering presidential campaign.
It was his first major interview since the debate, and he faced tougher questions than during the series of friendly interviews that aired Thursday with two black talk radio hosts, during which he stumbled over his words and made a few verbal gaffes.
But it is far from certain that the interview or a routine rally, delivered via teleprompter and watched by only a fraction of the debate’s millions of viewers, can repair the political damage to his campaign, despite the fact that he has largely avoided the major missteps that shocked so many during last week’s debate.
In the interview, Biden struggled to explain his debate performance, again blaming a “bad cold” and suggesting he was caught off guard by Trump’s barrage of lies.
“The whole way I was preparing — nobody’s fault but mine, nobody’s fault but mine,” he said in a meandering response. “I was preparing for what I would normally do by sitting down when I got back with foreign leaders or the National Security Council, for explicit details.”
He added: “The fact is I watched what he lied 28 times too. I couldn’t do it. I mean, the way the debate went, it wasn’t — my fault, nobody else’s fault. Nobody else’s fault.”
When Mr Stephanopoulos noted that he had appeared to be struggling from the first minutes of the debate, Mr Biden said: “Well, I just had a bad night.”
In an exchange that echoed Trump’s obsession with crowd size, Biden bragged about Friday’s rally, where hundreds filled a small gymnasium. He asked: “How many people do you think can draw the crowd I drew tonight? Do you find it much more enthusiastic than today? Huh?”
Mr. Stephanopoulos replied: “I don’t think you want to play the crowd game. Donald Trump can draw big crowds.”
The interview with Mr. Stephanopoulos aired in full just hours after Mr. Biden vowed to stay in the race before a raucous campaign rally in Madison, Wisconsin, telling hundreds in the crowd that he would ignore calls to make way for another nominee.
“Guess what? They’re trying to push me out of the race,” he said. “Well, let me make this as clear as I can. I’m staying in the race!”
In his speech Friday, delivered in a small high school gym, he addressed the issue of his age head-on, saying he was not too old to create 15 million jobs, get the first black woman on the Supreme Court or “beat Big Pharma.”
“I’m in Wisconsin for one reason,” he said, “because we’re going to win.”
Mr. Biden’s actions in the days since the debate have come under intense political scrutiny. Every word Mr. Biden spoke during the interview and the rally is being viewed through the lens of the twin questions hanging over his campaign: At 81, is he too old? And can he still win?
For days, Biden’s team has been saying he can’t do it, but he can.
But it took more than a week for the president to schedule the Madison rally and the interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. Anger simmered for days as Democrats built support for the idea that he should drop out of the race.
A group of 168 businessmen and donors sent a letter Friday calling on him to step down. They included Paul Tagliabue, the former NFL commissioner; John and Tom Florsheim, the brothers who own the shoe company; and Christy Walton, a Walmart heir.
Reps. Seth Moulton, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Mike Quigley, Democrat of Illinois, were the latest lawmakers to call for Biden to end his reelection bid. Moulton told a Boston radio station on Thursday that he should “follow in the footsteps of one of our founding fathers, George Washington, and step aside and let new leaders rise.”
Sen. Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, wants to convene Democratic senators next week to discuss a path forward, while Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and Minority Leader, has scheduled a virtual meeting with leading Democrats in the House of Representatives on Sunday to discuss President Biden’s candidacy.
Biden remained defiant and even irritable all day on Friday.
In a brief exchange with reporters after the ABC interview, he accused the news media of being “wrong about everything” when it comes to predicting election outcomes. And he dismissed Mr. Warner as “the only one” in the Senate and talked about encouraging him to drop out of the race.
“I completely rule that out,” he told reporters as he boarded Air Force One at Dane County Regional Airport, adding that he wants “now, absolutely” another debate against Mr. Trump. A second debate is scheduled for September.
When asked about a succession plan, he said, “By the way, we do have succession plans. But what do I need a succession plan for?”
