President Biden on Thursday will enter another high-stakes moment in his re-election campaign when, under heavy scrutiny, he will face the media in a rare one-on-one press conference where he is sure to be faced with a barrage of questions about whether he can stay in office. race.
The press conference will close the NATO summit in Washington, where Biden hosted world leaders this week. But the calamity surrounding his 2024 bid since the June 27 debate with former President Trump has hardly abated, with reporters peppering the White House with questions about his mental acuity, fitness for office and what kind of treatment doctor he received.
Now, Biden himself will face dozens of journalists, preparing for another defining moment that Democrats will also be watching closely to determine how much they will support their own candidate in November.
“I think it’s a big moment,” one Democratic supporter told The Hill, adding that Biden has to do better than he did in the interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that aired Friday.
“I think it’s a tougher audience and a tougher set of issues as well,” the source said. “He doesn’t know who’s going to ask what. I think if he tries to wrap it up quickly, doesn’t answer a lot of questions, that will be a negative.”
The ABC interview, which was one of his first completely impromptu events since the debate, did not dampen calls for him to drop out of the race. Stephanopoulos himself appeared to say Wednesday that he doesn’t think Biden can serve four more years while being randomly stopped by a pedestrian in New York. Biden will have another impromptu event on Monday when he sits down with NBC News’ Lester Holt for an interview during a campaign stop in Austin, Texas.
With Biden’s political future in question, despite his clear calls for him not to step aside, the press conference will act as another major test of his now troubled campaign.
“Everything is at stake, and that’s the problem, because every day he has to hit 1,000,” said Democratic strategist Michael Starr Hopkins. “Tomorrow he will have to reach 1,000. The next day, he will have to reach 1,000. And I don’t know how anyone can do that.”
Hopkins added that even though Biden performed “very well” at the press conference, “it almost raises expectations for the next event. And so, this narrative of unequal performances is created.”
“If he is good, he is doomed. If he is bad, he is condemned even more,” he said.
A top House Democrat said Biden has to “change the image of what happened in the debate. He has to show that he can stand up and answer questions from the press and do so in an authoritative and coherent manner.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) said the communicator had at least some potential to stifle some of Biden’s recent critics.
“I think a lot of people will watch that press conference. And so it’s an opportunity for him to bring his A game and that would really help put things to rest. Anything less than that is going to be complicated,” Huffman said.
The press conference is expected to be similar in length to other individual post-summit press conferences Biden has participated in, according to the White House.
The president’s last individual press conference took place in November, in San Francisco, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, after meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier that day. This press conference lasted about 22 minutes.
Although the president does not take questions from the media before a press conference, the White House typically decides in advance which channels he will use. He may, at times, argue with reporters about issues on subjects he disagrees with.
Some Democrats are optimistic the press conference will go well, but argue it won’t change Biden’s trajectory given the damage to his post-debate political future.
“I strongly doubt the debate performance will be similar,” said Democratic strategist Jon Reinish.
But, he added, “a press conference from a big guy is not going to destroy what is a pretty much set narrative.”
The term “big boy” press conference was coined last week when a reporter asked press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about the nature of events on Thursday and whether it would be a “big boy” press conference, which It means that Biden would answer several questions and remain on stage for a long time alone, as opposed to a joint press conference with a world leader.
Jean-Pierre has since jokingly used the term to describe the press conference, but the White House has not specified how many questions the president will answer.
Biden has struggled to receive strong votes of confidence from his party allies since the debate.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) caused an uproar on Wednesday when she said MSNBC, “it is up to the president to decide whether to run. We all encourage him to make this decision because time is running out,” even though Biden has been adamant about his candidacy.
“I want him to do whatever he decides to do and that’s the way it is,” she added when asked if she wanted him to run.
David Axelrod, former President Obama’s top adviser, called those comments “very significant” and noted that Pelosi is “a very deliberate person.”
Meanwhile, several sitting House Democrats have called on him to resign, including Rep. Pat Ryan (NY), who became the eighth sitting House Democrat to do so.
Biden’s top fundraiser and actor, George Clooney, became Biden’s most famous detractor when he wrote in an op-ed on Wednesday that Democrats cannot win with Biden at the top of the ticket. Clooney hosted a star-studded fundraiser for Biden last month.
The press conference is now expected to prompt a surge in the number of Democratic lawmakers, donors and operatives calling for Biden to resign if he falters and has another impromptu public bad performance.
“He’s not going to be able to do anything where people have their concerns assuaged by debate,” said Alex Conant, a GOP strategist who has worked on several presidential campaigns. “But if he performs poorly at the press conference or in an interview two weeks from now, it’s simply fatal.”
Brett Samuels, Julia Mueller and Mychael Schnell contributed to this report.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
