Live Updates: After Halting Debate Performance, Biden Tries to Reassure Democrats at Rally
"He delivered a forceful show of energy at a rally in North Carolina. “I don’t debate as well as I used to,” he acknowledged, but added: “I know right from wrong.” Now former President Donald J. Trump is speaking in Virginia.
Pinned
Former President Donald J. Trump has taken the stage at a rally in Chesapeake, Va., where a crowd of supporters has been waiting in the heat for hours.
“Hello Virginia, did anybody last night watch a thing called the debate?” Mr. Trump said, opening with a reference to President Biden’s shaky performance at Thursday’s match up.
Trump spent his recent rallies and interviews arguing that President Biden was a skilled debater. On Friday, he is arguing that Biden is not competent enough to be president.
Former President Donald J. Trump has reached the stage to deliver a speech at a campaign rally in Virginia. He arrived about an hour late.
Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado, a Democrat, said Biden had presented “a compelling vision for the country” at the debate. Asked whether he thought Biden should continue as the nominee, he changed the subject to Trump, saying he “shouldn’t continue to be the Republican nominee after being convicted of a felony and the instability and inability to tell the truth that he’s shown time and time again.”
At a Pride event in New York City, where President Biden is expected to deliver remarks Friday, several people said they wanted to see the president speak after his disappointing debate performance. Steve Kess, 79, a Democrat and business executive, said Biden had helped pass effective legislation but did not manage to sell it. “He wanted to be a professor instead of a communicator,” Kess said.
Michael Tyler, the director of communications for the Biden campaign, said there were no internal conversations about replacing Biden on the ticket "whatsoever," and he said the president was still committed to attending the debate in September. "Joe Biden will be there on Sept. 10. We'll see what Donald Trump does."
Tyler said Biden “didn’t have the best night on the debate stage,” but added, "You’d rather have one bad night than a candidate with a bad vision” for the country.
When Donald J. Trump returned to the green room after Thursday night’s debate, he flashed two thumbs up to waiting advisers who greeted him with a standing ovation for his performance against President Biden.
The former president and his team were still basking in the glow of Democratic recriminations, hand-wringing and second-guessing on Friday morning over Mr. Biden’s lackluster showing, when the Supreme Court handed Mr. Trump a second political gift in less than 24 hours.
Karine Jean-Pierre, White House press secretary, told reporters on Air Force One that the president had a cold last night. “He had a sore throat. Once he knew he had a cold and a sore throat, he tested for Covid He tested negative,” she said. “He had a strong debate prep week, and he got a cold. It’s not something unusual.”
“Did he have a bit of a slow start? You heard from the vice president last night, yes. But as the time went on, he certainly” made up for it, Jean-Pierre added.
Before Thursday, voters were nearly evenly split on how President Biden would perform during the first presidential debate: 46 percent of registered voters said Mr. Biden would do well, and 49 percent predicted he would not, in a recent Times/Siena poll. More registered voters — 60 percent — said they thought former President Donald J. Trump would do well, and 34 percent said he would not.
Steven Bergstein, 70, a Democrat who lives in Bala Cynwyd, Pa., was in a group of voters who had expected Mr. Biden would perform very well. In an interview earlier this week, he said he hoped that the debate would be an opportunity for Mr. Biden to draw a contrast between himself and his opponent. “He’s a bright guy,” Mr. Bergstein said of Mr. Biden on Wednesday. “He’s intelligent. He’s been through this many, many times.”.
Simon Levien
Reporting from a Las Vegas rallyAs I spoke to voters at a Las Vegas rally for Vice President Harris, a Nevada Biden campaign staffer followed me and twice asked that voters end their interviews when their comments turned critical of President Biden.
Simon Levien
Reporting from a Las Vegas rallyOne undecided voter, Stephen Stubbs, said he wished Biden would step aside and let Harris be the presidential nominee. The staffer interrupted, saying: “I’m going to stop it here, sorry, if I can. It’s a Biden event. Is that okay?”
Former President Donald J. Trump repeated his hard-line message on immigration at the debate on Thursday, casting undocumented immigrants as a threat to American jobs, national security and the social safety net. President Biden offered little in the way of rebuttal.
Mr. Trump argued that the president’s policies had left the U.S.-Mexico border wide open, allowing crime and drugs to flow into cities and converting every state into a border state.
Former President Barack Obama offered President Biden a statement of support, saying, “Bad debate nights happen,” apparently referring to his own poorly received debateperformance against Mitt Romney in 2012. “But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself,” Obama said on social media, adding, “Last night didn’t change that.”
Former President Donald J. Trump is expected to deliver remarks shortly at a rally in Chesapeake, Va. Gov. Glenn Youngkin warmed up the crowd, declaring that it was “time to elect strength back into the White House.”
Roughly 50 million Americans watched last night’s debate on television, according to early Nielsen data. That is about two-thirds of the audience that tuned in for the first Biden-Trump debate in 2020. Fox News had the biggest audience of any individual network, with CNN, the debate’s organizer, close behind. Final ratings will arrive later Friday, but for now, the debate appears to be the most-watched telecast of the year outside of sports.
Where is Kamala Harris during this critical period of the campaign? Fund-raising. Harris and Doug Emhoff have an event Friday in Park City, Utah, according to a copy of the invitation, and Saturday she’ll be back in Los Angeles for a “Pride Garden Party” featuring a special performance from Idina Menzel, according to a second invite.
The day after Democratic supporters watched President Biden deliver a debate performance that they described as “painful,” “vacant” and “stumbling,” many of them openly questioned whether he was still right for the ticket, while others said they would still support him in November. They remained united in their distaste for Donald J. Trump. But they were also anxious about what would come next.
Here is a sampling of what Biden supporters across the country said.
transcript
Biden Vows to ‘Get Back Up’ After Poor Debate Performance
During a rally in North Carolina, President Biden attempted to minimize concerns about his fitness for office by reassuring the crowd that he’s up for the job.
Let me close with this. I know I’m not a young man. To state the obvious. Well, I know. Crowd: “Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe.” I don’t — folks, I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to, but I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth. I know, I know I know right from wrong. I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done. I know, like millions of Americans know, when you get knocked down, you get back up.
President Biden on Friday delivered one of the most forceful performances of his campaign, acknowledging that he doesn’t “debate as well as I used to” but firing up a crowd of thousands of supporters by furiously accusing former President Donald J. Trump of being a “one-man crime wave.”
Speaking to a large and boisterous crowd, Mr. Biden, 81, tried to beat back a chorus of doubters that emerged following a devastating debate against Mr. Trump the night before, when he appeared disjointed and unclear.
At a farm near Virginia Beach, hundreds of Trump supporters are especially jubilant before a rally with the former president. Their guy conquered last night, and even the news media they abhor has admitted that. Still some Trump supporters here confessed in interviews a nervousness that, given Biden’s startling performance, the Democrats may swap him out for a more formidable candidate. Most, though, say they’ll worry about that later.
Biden was much more energetic during that rally in North Carolina. He also had a teleprompter and stood before an enthusiastic, energetic crowd — two things absent during last night’s debate.
Democratic Party leaders swiftly and unequivocally ruled out the idea that President Biden would or should step aside after his shaky performance at the first presidential debate. But there was a palpable sense of anxiety on Capitol Hill on Friday morning about what it would mean for his campaign and their own re-election chances.
“We have a great team of people that will help govern,” said Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California and an official Biden surrogate responsible for reaching out to young voters. “That is what I’m going to continue to make the case for.”
Biden ends his remarks with a little mini-jog away from the lectern. They clearly have heard the panic among Democrats.
The president’s speech today focused almost entirely on Donald Trump and Republicans. His points on the former president’s threats to democracy, economic record and support for limits on abortion were far clearer and stronger today, in a room of energetic supporters, than they were on stage last night.
The shift today in Biden’s tone makes it pretty clear his camp is aware just how anxious Democrats are about his age. He has come out intending to show his energy. Campaign officials are already spreading the word about his performance in this speech and attempting to reassure the public.
“I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious,” Biden says as the crowd erupts in cheers of “Joe!”. “I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I know. I know how to tell the truth. I know how to do this job.”
Let me close with this. I know I’m not a young man. To state the obvious. Well, I know. Crowd: “Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe.” I don’t — Folks, I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to, but I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth. I know, I know, I know right from wrong. I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done. I know, like millions of Americans know, when you get knocked down, you get back up.
Biden vows to make Roe v. Wade “the law of the land” if he is re-elected alongside a Democratic majority in Congress. It’s unclear how he’ll be able to achieve this in a second term.
“I made it clear last night that if you elect me and Kamala,” Biden says, “we will make Roe v. Wade” the law again. But Biden was not clear during some of his remarks on abortion rights last night. He bungled one answer on abortion by oddly meandering to the topic of crimes committed by immigrants. He is much more clear today.
Biden’s tone in these remarks is remarkably different than last night. He seems more energetic and animated. But the viewership for a speech on Friday afternoon pales in comparison to the debate last night.
President Biden, discussing Thursday’s debate, focused on Trump’s falsehoods on stage. He repeated his claim that the former president had “the morals of an alley cat.” He is making a much stronger case against Trump now than he did in Atlanta just 16 hours ago.
Biden has been bellowing through most of his remarks thus far. But he appears to still have the sore throat he described after the debate last night. He has stopped to cough multiple times.
One floor below a coffee shop called Jittery Joe’s in downtown Atlanta, some of President Biden’s top campaign officials tried to reassure donors on Friday that his poor debate performance would be only a passing matter.
“We’re fine,” was the message from the campaign chair, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, who tried to draw parallels to former President Barack Obama’s flat first debate performance 12 years ago.
Joe Scarborough pursed his lips and adjusted his tie. It was 6 a.m. on Friday, seven and a half hours after a diminished President Biden had gingerly stepped off the debate stage, and the host of “Morning Joe” on MSNBC was about to deliver a painful message to viewers of television’s most reliable redoubt of Biden support.
“I love Joe Biden,” Mr. Scarborough began as the cameras flipped on in his home studio in Maine. “I think his presidency has been an unqualified success.”
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