US President Joe Biden is “absolutely not” pulling out of the US presidential race, his spokeswoman said on Wednesday, as pressure mounted following his disastrous debate performance against former US president Donald Trump.
Panic has gripped the Democratic Party in the wake of last week’s TV debate, and internal rumblings about finding a replacement candidate before November’s election have been amplified by polls showing Trump extending his lead.
The New York Times and CNN reported that Biden, 81, had acknowledged to a key ally that his re-election bid was on the line if he failed to quickly reassure the public that he was still up to the job.
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White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre rejected those reports outright, insisting Biden has no intention of withdrawing.
“The president is clear-eyed and he is staying in the race,” she told reporters.
Biden told a call with campaign and party staffers that he is going nowhere.
“I’m in this race to the end and we’re going to win because when Democrats unite, we will always win. Just as we beat Donald Trump in 2020, we’re going to beat him again in 2024,” a source close to the campaign quoted him as saying.
He repeated that message in an emergency meeting with Democratic governors, who pledged their continued support, attendees said afterward.
“As the president continued to tell us, and show us, that he was all in ... we said that we would stand with him,” Maryland Governor Wes Moore told reporters alongside Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and New York Governor Kathy Hochul.
Walz said Biden was “fit to serve.”
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who also attended the meeting at the White House and is seen as one of the top picks to replace Biden if he should drop out, on social media platform X said that “he is in it to win it and I support him.”
Biden has admitted he performed poorly in the debate, and was blunt in a radio interview recorded on Wednesday with Wisconsin’s Civic Media.
“I screwed up. I made a mistake. That’s 90 minutes on stage. Look at what I’ve done in 3.5 years,” he said.
He echoed that sentiment in an interview with Pennsylvania’s WURD radio yesterday, saying “I had a bad debate.”
The Biden campaign has been desperate to reassure Democratic donors and voters that the president’s performance against Trump was a one-off.
However, party figures have voiced bafflement over what they see as deflection and excuses from the president and his aides.
Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings, one of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors, told the New York Times that Biden should withdraw.
“Biden needs to step aside to allow a vigorous Democratic leader to beat Trump and keep us safe and prosperous,” he said in an e-mail to the paper.
The concern was compounded by a New York Times poll conducted after the debate that showed Trump with his biggest lead ever over Biden — 49 percent to 43 percent of likely voters.
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