First Lady Jill Biden Criticizes Reporter for Asking About Biden Dropping Out
US First Lady Jill Biden expressed her frustration with reporters on Monday, chastising them for “screaming” at her as she exited a coffee shop. The incident occurred when reporters began questioning her about the increasing number of House Democrats urging her 81-year-old husband, President Joe Biden, to withdraw from his reelection bid. In a video captured by JM Rieger, a senior video journalist at The Washington Post, a female reporter’s question prompted Jill Biden to respond, “Why are you screaming at me? You know me. Don’t scream at me, just let me talk.”
The White House had invited reporters to join Jill Biden’s three-state campaign tour on Monday. However, the First Lady is seldom asked tough questions. As part of the Biden administration’s ongoing efforts to address growing concerns from media pundits and Democratic colleagues about the president’s mental fitness to remain in the race, Jill Biden made campaign stops across North Carolina, Florida, and Georgia to support her husband’s campaign.
During her North Carolina event, Jill Biden emphasized, “As commander in chief, President Biden wakes up every morning ready to work for you. That’s what this election is all about. You. For all the talk out there about this race, Joe has made it clear that he’s all in.” President Biden and his family have maintained that he will continue in the race.
Jill Biden has also begun receiving more media attention, particularly after reports suggested that she is the “ultimate influence” over whether the president should remain in the race. She was featured in a puff piece on the cover of the August issue of Vogue.
After Joe Biden’s poor performance in his first debate against Donald Trump, Democratic members of Congress are urging President Joe Biden to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race. Although numerous legislators have privately conveyed their concerns about Biden’s reelection campaign, others have resolutely supported the president’s intentions. Biden has pushed back hard, telling MSNBC that “elites in the party” were behind calls for him to quit, claiming strong support from actual voters, and challenging doubters in his own party to “run against me. Go ahead. Announce for president – challenge me at the convention!”
A spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee hit back at the New York Times editorial board over its op-ed saying Biden should end his reelection bid. “It’s laughable,” said spokesperson Abhi Rahman. The Biden campaign dismissed the op-ed earlier.
Biden delivered remarks at a New York fundraiser, capping a day of campaigning as he attempted to rebound from his debate performance. “When you get knocked down, you get back up,” Biden said, repeating a phrase he used at a campaign rally earlier in the day. Biden also poked fun at his age, saying that it gave him the ability to get things done and tell the truth. “This is a nation that believes in honesty,” he said.
Before the fundraiser, Biden held a rally in North Carolina and delivered remarks at the opening ceremony for the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center in New York. The Biden and Trump campaigns were hoping to appeal to Black voters in the first debate, but some expressed disappointment in both candidates after the faceoff.
In front of a New York fundraising audience, Jill Biden recounted a conversation she had with her husband after the debate. “As Joe said earlier today, he’s not a young man,” she said. “And you know, after last night’s debate, he said, ‘You know, Jill, I don’t know what happened. I didn’t feel that great.’” The First Lady said that she responded by saying, ‘Look, Joe, we are not going to let 90 minutes define the four years that you’ve been president.’”
Despite Biden’s dismal debate performance, abortion care providers remain resolute. Proponents of abortion rights were dumbfounded by Biden’s vague and sometimes incoherent messages on abortion access during the debate, especially when he declined to rebuke Trump’s false claims that Democrats are in favor of killing babies. “The debate was a disaster,” said Dr. Warren Hern, director of the Boulder Abortion Clinic in Colorado. “It’s going to be hard to recover from this.”
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., slammed The New York Times’ editorial board’s opinion piece urging the president to drop out of the 2024 race. His message on X was just two words: “f— that.” Fetterman has been a stalwart supporter of Biden.
Biden’s allies are touting grassroots organizing and fundraising figures from debate night in a memo first shared with NBC News. The memo highlighted the days ahead of the debate as “mobilizing hundreds of thousands of grassroots supports online and off.” They said that the Biden campaign and its allies organized 436 watch parties across the country, leading to more than 12,000 in-person attendees in battleground states.
Georgia Democrats worry for Biden but still plan to vote for him. Anne Fayssoux, 71, couldn’t believe the Biden at the podium was the same one she saw deliver a rousing State of the Union address mere months earlier. At the debate’s conclusion, she said she felt “sad, anxious and upset.” Even after noting Biden’s numerous slip-ups, she doubled down that Biden would receive her vote.
Another traditionally Democratic voter, Andrew Rose, 50, was more critical of Biden and the debate as a whole. “Oh, I was so disappointed in Biden. He was hoarse. He was pale. He looked really frail,” Rose said. “And, I mean, Trump just lied through his teeth the entire time. It was a disaster, start to finish, both sides.” Rose said that calls to have Biden step aside for another Democrat were uncalled for and continues to have “confidence” in the president to continue his campaign.
Democratic voters in Dearborn, Michigan, are split on whether Biden should step aside in order for the Democratic Party to nominate another candidate after a stumbling debate night. Rashad Asoufy said it was “surprising to see the decline in Biden’s health due to his age.” “Ideally, I would like him to step down and have someone else be the Democratic ticket,” Asoufy told NBC News. “But if he’s all we have, I would still stick with Biden because the alternative is not really good for this country because it kind of threatens our democracy.”
Jennifer Ganem, 59, thinks it is too late for Biden to step aside. “I think that we need to stay the course at this point of the process,” she said. While Ganem described Biden’s performance as “sad,” she said, “We are voting for that leader, but we also need to remember we’re voting for all the people around our president, somebody who can bring together a good team, and former President Trump did not prove that he could do that.”
On the other hand, Marsha Brazil, a 71-year-old from Dearborn, is adamant that Biden should not step aside. “Biden has the experience. Why would you want to — did they want to replace Trump? Look at all the things — he’s a convicted felon,” she said. Brazil added that “the Democrats need to get together and stick with what they got and try to improve them with what they have instead of trying to replace it. You don’t replace nothing like that.”
Under the dark cloud of a lackluster debate performance and panic among some Democrats, Biden spoke at the opening of a visitor center for LGBTQ history in New York City. Biden addressed several hundred LGBTQ attendees and allies, including singer Elton John, actor Neil Patrick Harris, fashion designer Michael Kors, and “RuPaul’s Drag Race” star Courtney Act, at the opening of the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center to commemorate Pride Month.
“Today, I’m proud to unveil a new visitor center for Stonewall National Monument, the first ever LGBTQ+ visitor center in the national parks of America,” Biden said. “It matters. We remain in a battle for the soul of America. But I look around at the pride, hope and light that all of you bring, and I know it’s a battle we are going to win and continue to make progress.”
Stumping for the president at a Biden-Harris campaign rally in Las Vegas, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly made a comment that prompted “lock him up” chants from the crowd. “We have a choice between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who will continue to fight for you, or a convicted criminal who is only looking out for himself,” said the senator, who’s a Navy veteran and former astronaut. On came a series of “lock him up,” chants, a variation of the “lock her up” chants originated by Trump’s own supporters in reference to Hillary Clinton in the run-up to the 2016 election. Kelly responded to the chants, saying, “Folks, all you have to do is vote.”
Former President Donald Trump is not known for restrained commentary about his political opponents’ weaknesses. But after a debate in which a number of Democrats felt President Joe Biden’s performance was so uneven and concerning that he should consider getting out of the presidential contest just weeks before the Democratic National Convention, Trump is holding back from the full pile-on.
Julián Castro, a former HUD Secretary in the Obama administration who then ran for president in 2020, said that Biden had failed to clear a low bar in the first presidential debate. “Biden had probably the lowest bar to clear of any presidential nominee coming into a — this time summer, usually it’s a fall debate — and he failed to clear that bar. That was obvious,” Castro told host Ryan Nobles on NBC News’ “Meet the Press NOW.” “After last night, it became less likely that he will win. Now it’s up to him to rebuild that competence to make it more likely.”
The Supreme Court is set to rule Monday on whether former President Donald Trump has sweeping presidential immunity that would shield him from prosecution for trying to overturn the 2020 election. The justices have left the high-profile case for their final decision day before summer break. It was the last one argued this term.
There is no love lost between The New York Times and some staffers in Bidenworld after the newspaper’s editorial board called on the president to drop out. Biden campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond responded to the New York Times editorial board’s op-ed urging Biden to step aside after last night’s poor debate performance. “The last time Joe Biden lost the New York Times editorial board’s endorsement it turned out pretty well for him,” he said.
Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate nominee Dave McCormick thinks there is a “possibility our Commander-in-Chief is not up to the job” — and suggested the 25th Amendment, which allows the vice president and Cabinet members to write a letter to Congress declaring the president is not fit to serve, is “worth consideration.” McCormick, sitting next to former Attorney General Bill Barr at his “America’s Future Tour: Safer Communities for Pennsylvania” event just north of Pittsburgh, described this as a “sad and scary thing to say.”
Julius Tolbert, an 84-year-old Democrat, wishes that Vice President Kamala Harris was running for president instead of Biden in light of his lackluster debate performance. “I wish the vice president, I wish she was running for president. I think she’d be a good president,” said Tolbert. “I think she — the people can understand her better because she can get up there and talk,” Tolbert added. Tolbert, an African American originally from Alabama born to sharecroppers, said he worries what Republicans retaking the White House will mean for Black people and people of color.
The New York Times editorial board published a bombshell op-ed calling on Biden to leave the race, joining the rising chorus of concerned politicians and pundits. “The clearest path for Democrats to defeat a candidate defined by his lies is to deal truthfully with the American public: acknowledge that Mr. Biden can’t continue his race, and create a process to select someone more capable to stand in his place to defeat Mr. Trump in November,” the editorial board wrote.
The first presidential debate of the 2024 campaign cycle drew about 51.3 million people, according to the media analytics company Nielsen, a sharp drop from previous debates and the smallest audience since a 2004 debate between then-Sen. John Kerry and President George W. Bush. Nielsen’s audience estimate came in slightly above host CNN’s figure. The cable news company said that 47.9 million people watched the debate between Biden and Trump across broadcast and cable TV as well as streaming.
Democrats running in competitive down-ballot races this year largely kept quiet or dodged questions about the first presidential debate as the party grapples with the fallout from Biden’s shaky performance. Several Senate Democratic candidates in key states took to social media not to comment on the debate, but to share footage from recent campaign events or highlight other policies. Staffers working with several of those campaigns did not return requests for comment on the debate. And a few candidates did not directly answer questions about whether Biden should continue as the party’s presidential nominee.
Trump this afternoon praised the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of a Jan. 6 defendant seeking to toss out an obstruction charge for taking part in the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. “The great Supreme Court … they did the right thing,” Trump said at a rally in Chesapeake, Virginia, referring to the court’s 6-3 ruling in favor of Jan. 6 defendant Joseph Fischer. Trump also said those involved in the riot were facing persecution because of his campaign for president, although many of their charges predated his presidential bid.
Former President Bill Clinton commented on Biden’s debate performance, pointing to his “solid leadership.” “Joe Biden has given us 3 years of solid leadership, steadying us after the pandemic, creating a record number of new jobs, making real progress solving the climate crisis, and launching a successful effort in reducing inflation, all while pulling us out of the quagmire Donald Trump left us in,” Clinton said. “That’s what’s really at stake in November.”
Source: The Washington Post, Fox News, Reuters, The Guardian, NBC News, CNN, PoliticsPA.com, Aspen Ideas Festival, Nielsen, News5 Cleveland
