By Joseph Machado
MILWAUKEE (Reuters) – President Joe BidenDavid’s re-election bid has been plunged into new turmoil following reports that top Democratic leaders had privately pressured him to end his campaign, while donald trump was ready to accept the Republican presidential nomination Thursday at his party’s national convention.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck SchumerHouse minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and former president of the Chamber Nancy Pelosi all have expressed deep concerns directly to Biden in recent days that he will not only lose the White House but also cost the party any chance of winning back the U.S. House of Representatives in the Nov. 5 elections, according to reports in multiple media outlets. communication.
Biden, 81, has so far refused to accept public calls from 20 Democratic congressmen to step aside after a halting performance in his June 27 debate against Trump, 78.
His troubles worsened on Wednesday when he tested positive for COVID-19 during a campaign visit to Nevada, forcing him to return to his home in Delaware to work in isolation.
Meanwhile, Trump will close the four-day Republican National Convention in Milwaukee with his first public speech since surviving an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania on Saturday in which a bullet struck his ear.
The convention exposed Republican unity in contrast to the divisions roiling Democrats. Trump’s former main rivals for the nomination, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, have offered strong support for his candidacy despite their previous criticism.
Sen. J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate and another former critic turned loyalist, presented himself Wednesday as a son of a neglected Ohio mill town who will fight for the working class if elected in November.
By chronicling his difficult journey from a difficult childhood to the U.S. Marines, Yale Law School, venture capitalism and the U.S. Senate, Vance, 39, introduced himself to Americans while using his story to argue that you understand their daily struggles.
“I grew up in Middletown, Ohio, a small town where people spoke their minds, built with their hands and loved their God, their family, their community and their country with all their hearts,” Vance said. “But it was also a place that was pushed aside and forgotten by the American ruling class in Washington.”
As the first millennial on a major party ticket, Vance, who has embraced Trump’s blend of conservative populism and isolationist foreign policy, is well positioned to be the future leader of the Make America Great Movement.
In a sign of his potential value to the ticket, he also appealed to the middle and working classes of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin specifically — three Rust Belt swing states that are likely to decide the Nov. 5 election.
Vance’s primetime debut, less than two years after taking his first public role, caps a meteoric rise. He is one of several high-profile Republicans, such as U.S. Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, whose transformations from critics to loyalists have underscored Trump’s takeover of the party.
For Trump’s political opponents, his dominance of the party portends a darker time as he makes good on his promises to expand the power of the presidency, exact revenge on his enemies and threaten long-standing democratic institutions.
Vance would promote “an agenda that puts extremism and the ultra-wealthy above our democracy,” the Biden campaign said Wednesday.
Vance has opposed military aid to Ukraine and defended Trump’s attempts to reverse his 2020 election loss to Biden.
His speech embraced many of the fundamental principles of Trumpism, promising to prioritize national production over Chinese imports and warning allies that they would no longer be able to “free ride” to guarantee world peace.
The night’s other speakers often engaged in scathing attacks on Biden, in contrast to the tone of national unity that Trump had promised after the shooting.
(Reporting by Joseph Axe, Nathan Layne and Gram Slattery in Milwaukee; additional reporting by Helen Coster, Costas Pitas and Alexandra Ulmer; writing by Joseph Axe; editing by Howard Goller)
