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“I am all in. I’m riding with Biden no matter which direction he goes,” Clyburn said on NBC’s “Today” program.

Clyburn, 83, is a respected voice among Black Americans whose support is essential to Biden’s 2024 campaign. He has served in Congress for more than 30 years and played a leading role in Biden’s successful 2020 White House run.

“Please pass the torch to one of our many capable Democratic leaders so we have the best chance to defeat Donald Trump,” Representative Brittany Pettersen wrote on social media.

With most U.S. voters firmly divided into ideological camps, opinion polls show the race remains close.

Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, said he met with Biden on Thursday night to convey the range of thoughts they held about his candidacy. He did not say how Biden responded.

“I directly expressed the full breadth of insight, heartfelt perspectives and conclusions about the path forward,” Jeffries wrote in a letter to colleagues.

Democrats are worried that Biden’s low approval ratings and growing concerns that he is too old for the job could cause them to lose seats in the House and Senate, leaving them with no grip on power in Washington should Trump win the White House.

Thursday’s press conference provided fodder for Biden supporters and doubters alike.

At one point, Biden referred to his vice president, Kamala Harris, as “Vice President Trump”. Hours earlier he introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as “President Putin” at the NATO summit, drawing gasps from those in the room.

Biden occasionally garbled his responses at the press conference but also delivered detailed assessments of global issues, including Ukraine’s war with Russia and the Israel-Gaza conflict, that served as a reminder of his decades of experience on the world stage.

A senior Biden campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity called the performance the “worst of all worlds. Not good. But not bad enough to make him change his mind.”

Another strategist who worked on Biden’s 2020 campaign said it would not quell Democrats’ concerns.

Fundraiser Dmitri Mehlhorn said other donors told him they saw a strong performance from the president. “This is the person who can beat Trump. The mistakes are baked in and the upside is strong,” he told Reuters.

Biden will try to shift the focus back to Trump at an evening rally in Detroit.

He and other Democrats have warned that a sweeping policy agenda crafted by conservative allies called Project 2025 would give Trump a blank check to pursue his whims. Trump has distanced himself from the project.

After two weeks of fallout from Biden’s halting debate performance, Democrats are hoping the bright spotlight shifts to Trump and his agenda next week when the Republican Party convenes in Milwaukee to formally nominate him for president.

An NPR/PBS poll released on Friday found Biden leading Trump 50% to 48%, a slight increase from his position before the debate. Biden fared slightly worse than Trump when third-party candidates were included in the questioning.

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Two recent polls show Vice President Kamala Harris beating Donald Trump in a hypothetical 2024 matchup.

On Friday, an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll of 1,174 registered voters suggests Harris, considered the best-placed person to replace President Joe Biden as the Democrat’s 2024 nominee should he drop out of the race, would narrowly beat Trump in November’s election (50 percent to 49).

The poll was released one day after an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll of 2,431 adults found that Harris would beat Trump by three points overall (49 percent to 46) and among registered voters (49 percent to 47).

Newsweek reached out to Harris’ office via email for comment.

Biden has faced growing pressure, including from his own party, to end his reelection bid after his poor performance at the June 27 CNN debate.

Both surveys were conducted before Biden caused concern after he mistakenly referred to Harris as “Vice President Trump” during his high-stakes NATO press conference on Thursday evening. Just hours before, Biden also misspoke when he introduced Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin” before correcting himself.

Harris said she is still supporting Biden in the White House race and has given no indication that she wishes to replace him as the Democratic nominee for 2024.

The NPR/PBS News/Marist survey suggests if Biden decides to drop out of the presidential contest, neither Harris nor any other potential candidates would improve the Democrats‘ chances against Trump.

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks in Greensboro, North Carolina, on July 11. Two polls suggest Harris would beat Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks in Greensboro, North Carolina, on July 11. Two polls suggest Harris would beat Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
Sean Rayford/Getty Images

The poll shows Biden beating Trump by two points (50 percent to 48) in the two-way presidential matchup. In a previous NPR/PBS News/Marist survey conducted before the CNN debate, Biden and Trump were tied at 49 percent.

In addition to Harris’ one-point lead over Trump, California Governor Gavin Newsom beat Trump by two points (50 percent to 48), while Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer tied with the Republican on 49 percent.

Reacting to the poll results, Lee M. Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, said: “Despite a series of cataclysmic political events, including Trump’s felony convictions and Biden’s abysmal debate performance, the race for the White House remains essentially unchanged.

“But Biden needs to restore confidence among his party faithful that he can win. And Trump needs to tread very lightly during the Republican convention about Project 2025 and avoid positioning the GOP as too extreme.”

Elsewhere, the ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll showed that Harris would perform better than Trump in a hypothetical 2024 election among women (52 percent to 44) and Hispanics (56 percent to 40).

Harris also enjoys 82 percent support among Black people and 86 percent among Black women, but these are not significantly different from Biden’s results for these demographics.

During his press conference at the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Biden reiterated he has no intention of exiting the 2024 race.

“I’m not handing off to another generation; I’ve got to finish this job,” Biden said. “I’ve got to finish this job because there’s so much at stake.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden faced a test Thursday that he had avoided so far this year — a solo news conference with questions from the White House press corps.

The news conference was meant to reassure a disheartened group of Democratic lawmakers, allies and persuadable voters in this year’s election that Biden still has the strength and stamina to be president. Biden has tried to defend his feeble and tongue-tied performance in the June 27 debate against Republican Donald Trump as an outlier rather than evidence that at 81 he lacks the vigor and commanding presence that the public expects from the commander in chief.

He made at least two notable flubs, referring at an event beforehand to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “President Putin” and then calling Kamala Harris “Vice President Trump” when asked about her by a reporter. But he also gave detailed responses about his work to preserve NATO and his plans for a second term. And he insisted he’s not leaving the race even as a growing number of Democratic lawmakers ask him to step aside.

Here are some highlights from the press conference:

He bungled key names — and remained defiant

Perhaps Biden’s biggest slip-up in the press conference came early on when he referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump,” in saying he picked her because he believed she could beat Trump.

Even before the news conference, Biden had bungled an important name at the NATO summit and instantly lowered expectations for his performance.

“Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin,” Biden said as he was introducing Ukrainian President President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is most definitely not Russian President Vladimir Putin. The gaffe immediately prompted gasps, as Biden caught himself and said to Zelenskyy: “President Putin? You’re going to beat President Putin.”

But he was defiant when a reporter brought up his reference to “Vice President Trump” and noted the presumptive Republican nominee’s campaign was already promoting the slip-up. “Listen to him,” he said, before walking off the stage.

One House Democrat, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, issued a statement minutes later calling on the president to withdraw.

He insisted, ‘I’ve got to finish this job’

It’s a delicate dance between the president and vice president, with many Democrats openly pining for Harris to replace Biden on the ticket. Biden didn’t acknowledge that tension, but only brought Harris up in response to pointed questions about whether he believed she had the capability to replace him.

“I wouldn’t have picked her unless I thought she was qualified to be president,” Biden said, citing Harris’ resume from prosecutor to the U.S. Senate.

But in response to a later question he acknowledged he’d moved on from his 2020 campaign promise to be a “bridge” to a new generation of Democrats. “What changed was the gravity of the situation I inherited,” he said, without a word about his vice president.

Repeatedly, he said, “I’ve got to finish this job.”

The press conference ended with Biden being asked directly whether he’d step down for Harris if he saw polling showing she had a better chance of beating Trump. “No, unless they come back and said there’s no way you can win,” Biden responded. Then he added, in a stage whisper, “No poll’s saying that.”

He argued he’s delivered results over rhetoric

Biden tried to make the case that what he’s doing matters more than how he talks about it.

He praised the just finished NATO summit as elevating America’s standing. “Have you ever seen a more successful conference?” Biden said to a group of reporters who often only got to see the conference during prepared remarks.

He drilled down on how inflation has eased from its 2022 peak as he reeled off stats such as the creation of 800,000 manufacturing jobs under his watch, saying that world leaders would want to trade their own economies for what United States has. He also said he would cap how much rent could grow for tenants of landlords who are part of a tax-credit program for low-income housing.

It’s the same pitch Biden has made in stump speeches without necessarily doing much to move his own popularity. His team believes it will sink in if repeated constantly.

He brought up his work on NATO

Biden kicked off the press conference by talking at length about NATO and its value to the United States — one of his strongest political issues against Trump, who has been openly skeptical of the alliance and once suggested he’d encourage Russia to attack NATO members whom he considered delinquent.

Biden tied himself to an American tradition stretching “from Truman to Reagan to me” of defending NATO. “Every American must ask herself or himself, is the world safer with NATO?” he asked.

Later, to assure a European journalist asking about governments on that continent worrying Trump could win, Biden launched into a detailed recounting of how he helped shepherd Finland into the alliance. After that, he went into detail about how to push back against China for supporting Russia during its war against Ukraine and contended he will continue to be able to deal with Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Overall, Biden spoke forcefully and fluently about foreign policy, one of his favorite subjects. But the news conference’s focus wasn’t really foreign policy, it was reassuring Democrats and the world that Biden is still able to be president and beat Trump.

That shows how even Biden’s strengths are being overshadowed by questions about his capabilities.

When possible, he went back to the stump speech

Every politician has a stock set of lines. And whenever Biden could, he went back to his favorite talking points. It was a way to answer the question without necessarily needing to say anything spontaneous or new.

He went after trickle-down economics, borrowing a line about his father never benefiting much from tax cuts aimed at the wealthy (“I don’t remember much trickling down to his kitchen table”). He hailed Delaware for leading the country in corporations. He said he’s the “most pro-union labor president in history.” He explained his decision to run for a second term with a variation on his “finish the job” catchphrase. He went into his standard spiel about computer chips.

With no time limit on his answers like he faced at the debate, Biden went on for several minutes at a time telling stories about his interactions with foreign leaders and making the case for his reelection.

He answered questions in detail — unlike at the debate

There were few fireworks in Biden’s answers — with the highly anticipated event at times coming across as more of a think tank lecture than an effort to grab voters’ attention. He went into granular detail on geopolitics and rattled off numbers — asking at one moment, though, to not be held to the precise figure.

While it didn’t erase the stumbles and blank stares from the debate, it showed that he could engage with reporters’ questions on a range of issues without losing focus.

There was still regular coughing and throat clearing. And at times he lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper that evoked the rasp of his voice on debate night.

Overall, his presentation was a reminder that people are focused on him now with an almost clinical eye toward possible slip-ups and mistakes, the kind of pressure that is unlikely to go away for as long as Biden insists he’ll stay in the race.

___

Riccardi reported from Denver.

Former president Barack Obama may be quietly supporting — or at least not objecting to — the Democratic push to oust Joe Biden, according to multiple reports.

On the Thursday morning broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” — a personal favorite show of Biden’s — host Joe Scarborough said that the Biden team believes Obama is supporting the Democratic revolt against Biden’s reelection campaign.

President Biden will speak at a closely watched news conference Thursday as he faces mounting pressuring over the future of his candidacy. The news conference, scheduled for 6:30 p.m. in Washington after a day of meetings with NATO leaders, comes as the president faced a fresh wave of calls for him to end his re-election bid.

Mr. Biden rarely gives news conferences — this will be his first alone on stage since November — and follows the disastrous debate performance against former President Donald J. Trump three weeks ago that left his supporters deeply shaken. Mr. Biden’s appearance will mix some of his greatest strengths as president — his diplomacy and foreign policy efforts — with an unscripted setting that could reassure or further unnerve Democrats on his most critical weaknesses — perceptions of his age, health and vigor.

Here’s what to know:

• President’s resistance: Mr. Biden has said that he is set on staying in the race and that only “the Lord Almighty” could get him to drop out. Elected Democrats, including Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, have politely but firmly asserted that the matter is not closed and that Mr. Biden should again consider whether he is up for a vigorous campaign.

• Democratic split: Other Democratic lawmakers have been more explicit in their efforts to push Mr. Biden aside. Peter Welch of Vermont on Wednesday became the first Senate Democrat to call for Mr. Biden to withdraw from the race, while a small but growing number of House Democrats have explicitly called for him to do so. On Thursday, Representative Hillary Scholten of Michigan joined them.

• Orban to meet Trump: Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, a longtime supporter of Mr. Trump, is expected to meet with the former president later Thursday. Mr. Orban, who is in the United States for the NATO summit, has traveled for a series of meetings this month, including one with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

• Money stakes: Mr. Biden is also facing increased financial pressure on his re-election campaign. Several top fund-raisers and megadonors for the Democratic Party, including the actor George Clooney, called on Wednesday for the president to step aside and make way for a new candidate.

• Trump on the trail: Mr. Trump, who largely retreated from public view as Democrats openly agonized over Mr. Biden’s debate performance, held a rally on Tuesday night that was at times boastful about the state of the race and mercilessly cruel to his political opponents. Mr. Trump, who is expected to make his running mate announcement soon, denigrated Mr. Biden’s looks; called Chris Christie, a Republican presidential rival, “a fat pig”; and suggested that Nancy Pelosi might be deteriorating faster than Mr. Biden.

July 11, 2024, 11:40 a.m. ET

July 11, 2024, 11:40 a.m. ET

As a growing number of Democrats call on President Biden to step aside, a group of Black faith leaders is holding a news conference at the Georgia State Capitol in support of the president. Several influential leaders of Black churches in Atlanta are attending.

July 11, 2024, 11:35 a.m. ET

July 11, 2024, 11:35 a.m. ET

Representative Ritchie Torres, Democrat of New York, said that dismissing Biden’s debate performance as one bad night “reflects a continuing pattern of denial and self-delusion.” A few days earlier, Torres had urged Democrats to hold their criticism for fear of weakening Biden if he remained the nominee. But in a social media post on Thursday, Torres came close to calling for the president to drop his re-election bid.

“If the president formally becomes the Democratic nominee, we will have no choice but to make the best of a complicated situation,” he wrote. “But there is no point in denying the complications.”

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July 11, 2024, 11:30 a.m. ET

July 11, 2024, 11:30 a.m. ET

The conservative entrepreneur and fund-raiser David Sacks is scheduled to speak at the Republican National Convention next week, according to a person with knowledge of the schedule. Sacks hosts an influential podcast called “All-In” that featured an interview with Trump a few weeks ago, and he is a close associate of Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, who famously gave a speech at the R.N.C. in 2016.

July 11, 2024, 11:26 a.m. ET

July 11, 2024, 11:26 a.m. ET

Mary Trump, Donald J. Trump’s estranged niece and a Biden campaign surrogate, shrugged off George Clooney’s expression of no-confidence in Biden’s candidacy. “It should be much bigger news that Donald has lost the support of virtually every single person who served with him when he was in the Oval Office,” she wrote in a blog post. She drew attention to former Vice President Mike Pence, who has refused to endorse Trump and was a target of the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters.

Credit…Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

July 11, 2024, 11:14 a.m. ET

July 11, 2024, 11:14 a.m. ET

Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, in a fund-raising appeal for President Biden, offered another irreverent rebuttal to fellow Democrats calling for Biden to end his re-election campaign. “There is only ONE person in this country who has ever kicked Trump’s a** in an election, and that is President Biden,” he wrote, adding: “I refuse to join the vultures on Joe’s shoulder following the debate.”

July 11, 2024, 11:10 a.m. ET

July 11, 2024, 11:10 a.m. ET

Another House Democrat, Representative Hillary Scholten of Michigan, has called on Biden to step aside as the Democratic nominee. “We just have too much at stake in this election to sit on the sidelines and be silent while we still have time to do something,” she told the Detroit News.

Credit…Anna Rose Layden for The New York Times

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July 11, 2024, 10:50 a.m. ET

July 11, 2024, 10:50 a.m. ET

The Trump campaign continued to make hay out of George Clooney’s no-confidence message about President Biden’s re-election bid. It posted a video that mashes together a scene from Clooney’s movie “Up in the Air,” where he plays a corporate down-sizer who is firing someone, with a clip of Biden’s ABC News interview in which he says he “just had a bad night” during the debate.

President Biden will hold a news conference on Thursday evening.Credit…Eric Lee/The New York Times

President Biden will hold his first solo news conference in eight months on Thursday when he faces reporters at the conclusion of a NATO summit in Washington, a critical test after his halting debate performance that seeded doubts about his re-election campaign.

The unscripted exchange with the news media comes as a growing number of Democrats on Capitol Hill and top donors have sounded alarms about Mr. Biden’s age and acuity, with some calling on him to step aside as the party’s presidential nominee.

Here’s what to know about the news conference:

It is scheduled to start at 6:30 p.m. Eastern.

The president will take questions at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, site of this week’s NATO summit. The news conference will wrap up a packed day for Mr. Biden, whose scheduled also includes two NATO working sessions and a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.

The New York Times will stream the news conference, alongside real-time commentary and analysis from reporters. The Associated Press will also offer a livestream at apnews.com.

Most cable news outlets will likely carry the news conference, given the intense scrutiny that Mr. Biden is facing to prove that he can handle unscripted moments.

July 11, 2024, 10:06 a.m. ET

July 11, 2024, 10:06 a.m. ET

A day after Senator Peter Welch of Vermont became the first Democrat in the Senate to call on President Biden to end his re-election run, Vermont’s representative in the House, Becca Balint, issued a statement saying that she shares the “same concerns of so many Vermonters on the question of whether the president is the best candidate to defeat Trump.” Balint, a Democrat, did not call for Biden to leave the race but said: “We need honest, serious conversation about the best path forward.”

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July 11, 2024, 10:02 a.m. ET

July 11, 2024, 10:02 a.m. ET

In a sign of how Republicans are trying to leverage the questions around Biden’s mental acuity, Bernie Moreno, the Republican challenging Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, is holding a news conference in front of Brown’s office, saying the senator had helped hide Biden’s state. “He should fess up to the conspiracy, to the cover-up, and then take a position on whether he’s going to continue to ride with Biden,” Moreno said.

Credit…Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

July 11, 2024, 9:57 a.m. ET

July 11, 2024, 9:57 a.m. ET

The White House pushed back President Biden’s news conference today by an hour — it is now scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Eastern. The appearance will cap a packed day for the president, who will be under intense scrutiny over how he handles an unscripted exchange with the news media.

July 11, 2024, 10:03 a.m. ET

July 11, 2024, 10:03 a.m. ET

A national security official said it was delayed because of the president’s full schedule at NATO.

July 11, 2024, 9:48 a.m. ET

July 11, 2024, 9:48 a.m. ET

Jacob Helberg, a young conservative activist who has quickly gained a following in Silicon Valley and Washington, tells me that he yesterday made another $1 million donation to back Trump — this one to the super PAC MAGA Inc. Helberg, an avowed anti-China hawk, tells me that Trump “will be the most pro-technology president in American history.” Helberg was recently named the co-chair of a young professionals for Trump group that is hosting an event at the Republican convention.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary at an event at the NATO summit in Washington on Tuesday.Credit…Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press

Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary will meet with former President Donald J. Trump in Florida on Thursday after the NATO summit in Washington, according to a Trump campaign official and a person close to the former president who was briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Mr. Trump has been a vocal supporter of Mr. Orban, and the meeting comes after a series of others by the Hungarian leader this month, including one with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, that caught many by surprise.

Hungary took over the European Union’s rotating presidency at the start of July with the promise to “make Europe great again” — echoing the “Make America Great Again” slogan of Mr. Trump, whom Mr. Orban has endorsed for the U.S. presidency.

Mr. Trump, who has a history of praising authoritarian leaders, often cites Mr. Orban’s support on the campaign trail. The two men met in March at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, where Mr. Trump lauded Mr. Orban as a “boss” because he did not brook political dissent. Both men are aligned in their anti-immigration views and their skepticism of NATO.

Although the E.U. presidency is largely a clerical position, Mr. Orban has engaged in a flurry of meetings with world leaders since taking over the position.

On July 2, he made an unexpected visit to Kyiv, Ukraine, to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. The move followed in the footsteps of other European leaders, but was one that Mr. Orban, an outlier in the European Union for his support of Russia and other issues, was known to have been avoiding.

Then on July 5, Mr. Orban traveled to Russia, meeting with Mr. Putin at the Kremlin for more than two hours. It was a rare trip to Russia by a European Union leader and one that caused alarm in capitals around the bloc. Zoltan Kovacs, a spokesman for Mr. Orban, said the leader’s trip to Moscow was “part of his peace mission.” There were no signs that the talks had done anything to sway Mr. Putin, however, with Mr. Orban telling reporters after that the positions of Kyiv and Moscow were “very far apart.”

Mr. Orban, a source of frustration for many European leaders, is known for embracing far-right politics and authoritarian leaders like Mr. Putin. He has also made unclear calls for a cease-fire in Ukraine and direct negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv, but has not publicly declared a concrete plan for a settlement.

Mr. Trump has also boasted of his closeness with Mr. Putin, frequently insisting in a hypothetical that his “very good relationship” with Russia’s leader would have kept him from invading Ukraine.

On Monday, Mr. Orban made yet another unexpected visit, this time to Beijing for previously unannounced talks with China’s top leader, Xi Jinping. China’s official summary of their meeting said they exchanged their ideas on ending the war in Ukraine.

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July 11, 2024, 7:44 a.m. ET

July 11, 2024, 7:44 a.m. ET

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that 67 percent of Americans believe President Biden should end his re-election campaign — including 56 percent of Democrats, 73 percent of Republicans and 73 percent of independents. But the race between him and former President Donald J. Trump for the popular vote is tied, according to the poll.

Senator Peter Welch of Vermont in the Capitol on Tuesday. He said on Wednesday that it was a hard decision to make but he thought President Biden should end his re-election campaign.Credit…Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

Senator Peter Welch of Vermont on Wednesday became the first Democratic senator to publicly call on President Biden to withdraw as the party’s presidential candidate in the aftermath of his disastrous debate performance last month.

“We can’t unsee what we saw,” Mr. Welch said in an interview shortly after publishing an op-ed in The Washington Post in which he called for Mr. Biden to end his campaign and allow another Democrat to take on former President Donald J. Trump. He said the president’s stumbles during the debate had only reinforced — rather than allayed — concerns about his ability to run a successful campaign.

“Age was a big issue going into the debate, and it was an opportunity, obviously, that the White House saw to put that to rest, and coming out of the debate, it intensified it,” the first-term senator said. “And that’s a real problem.”

Mr. Welch, 77, said his decision to call on the president to step aside was extremely difficult because he and voters in his home state “love Joe Biden.” He touted the 2020 election results, in which Vermonters delivered Mr. Biden the highest percentage victory of any state in the country.

But he said those same voters had deep anxieties about the future, fearing that four years under a second Trump administration would remove any chance of extending progressive policies championed by Mr. Biden and could wipe away the progress they have supported over the last four years.

Mr. Welch said it had become an existential issue for him to consider the threat of another Trump presidency, and that his determination was that Mr. Biden was not up to beating the former president.

“It’s not the elites in Vermont who are talking to me,” Mr. Welch said, brushing back an argument that Mr. Biden has made in recent days as he has defiantly refused to leave the race. “It’s the working-class mother who’s got two kids and is hoping maybe we can get the child care tax back. It’s kids who are working in AmeriCorps just to do cleanup and environmental work who are terrified that all the achievements of the Biden administration on the environment are going to be erased if we get a Trump presidency.”

“It’s a catastrophe,” he added.

The senator said he is not blind to the risks that could come should Mr. Biden step down, but rejected comparisons to the meltdown Democrats faced in 1968, when chaos and violence at the party convention in Chicago contributed to then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s loss in the general election that November.

“One of the achievements of Joe Biden is that he has unified the Democratic Party — everyone from Bernie Sanders to Joe Manchin,” Mr. Welch said. “And what that means is that if we have to go through ‘Who’s our next candidate?,’ it’s going to be among people who are all committed to the Biden commitment to save democracy, the Biden commitment to the environment, the Biden commitment to women’s rights.”

Andrew Tobias at a state dinner last year at the White House.Credit…Pool photo by Tierney Cross

On June 28, the day after the debate with Donald J. Trump that sent his campaign into turmoil, President Biden appeared at the Hammerstein Ballroom in Manhattan to raise money from the L.G.B.T.Q. wing of the Democratic Party.

Pete Buttigieg spoke. Elton John introduced Mr. Biden. And a co-chair of the event was Andrew Tobias, 77, who served as the treasurer for the Democratic National Committee from 1999 to 2017. Mr. Tobias remains a formidable party financier: He has raised nearly $2.5 million for the Biden-Harris re-election effort.

But he now says he hopes that Mr. Biden will end his campaign and help facilitate the selection of a new Democratic nominee in his place.

“I’m in the camp that believes our odds of winning are better with a mini-primary,” Mr. Tobias said, alluding to discussions among Democratic insiders about how best to choose a new standard-bearer if Mr. Biden were indeed to step aside.

In an interview, Mr. Tobias stressed repeatedly that Mr. Biden “and his team of 4,000 highly competent appointees” were “a thousand times — a million times — better than Trump and the team he would assemble.” He added that believes Mr. Biden has been one of our finest presidents in modern history and said that if he remains the Democratic nominee come November, he believes the party could “persuade enough voters to see that he and his team are the far, far better choice.”

“But we might have a stronger chance of winning if he passes the torch,” Mr. Tobias added. “And winning is all that matters. Either way, I’m all in.”

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Vice President Kamala Harris in Dallas on Wednesday. With an increasing number of Democrats questioning whether President Biden can and should serve another four years, she has been more explicit about the dangers she sees in a Trump second term.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Vice President Kamala Harris stepped up her attacks on former President Donald J. Trump on Wednesday as she said in Dallas that Mr. Trump would round up his political enemies, deport peaceful protesters and terminate the Constitution in a second term.

“Consider: Donald Trump has openly vowed if re-elected he’ll be a dictator on day one, that he will weaponize the Department of Justice against his political enemies, round up peaceful protesters and throw them out of our country and even, and even and I quote, ‘terminate’ the United States Constitution,” Ms. Harris said.

Ms. Harris has been harshly critical of Mr. Trump in the past, but at campaign events in the last two days, as an increasing number of Democrats question whether President Biden has the ability to beat Mr. Trump in November and the acuity to serve another four years, she has been far more explicit about the dangers she sees in a Trump second term. Ms. Harris has emerged as a top replacement for Mr. Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket should he drop out of the race.

In Dallas, Ms. Harris tried to attach Mr. Trump to Project 2025, a policy and staffing blueprint assembled by dozens of conservative groups for the next Republican administration. Among the platform proposals include replacing many federal civil servant jobs with political appointees who would be loyal to the president.

Ms. Harris accused Mr. Trump of adopting the project, which would shrink the Department of Education and cut programs like Head Start, the federal program for preschool children from low-income families.

“Let us be clear, this represents an outright attack on our children, our families and our future,” Ms. Harris told roughly 20,000 people at an event for Alpha Kappa Alpha, a historically Black sorority of which Ms. Harris is a member.

In her warning about the Constitution, Ms. Harris was referring to a statement from Mr. Trump in 2022 about Twitter. The site blocked links to a New York Post article that described emails found on a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden’s son.

“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Mr. Trump wrote at the time on his social media network, Truth Social. He also included in the post the lie that the 2020 election was “false & fraudulent.”

In December, he told Fox News that he would not be a dictator “other than Day 1” of his second term.

Project 2025, which is led by the conservative Heritage Foundation, is not Mr. Trump’s official campaign platform, and the former president has recently sought to distance himself from it. But the plans were developed by some of Mr. Trump’s former advisers who are likely to be involved in a potential second term, and many of the policies in Project 2025 mirror Mr. Trump’s official platform, Agenda 47.

In a statement, Danielle Alvarez, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, accused “Team Biden” of “fear-mongering because they have NOTHING else to offer the American people.”

With Mr. Biden mired in controversy after his disastrous debate performance two weeks ago, Mr. Trump has increasingly taken aim at Ms. Harris. Mr. Trump has dubbed her “Laffin’ Kamala Harris” and intentionally mispronounces her name at campaign events. Ms. Harris’s recent sharp rebukes of Mr. Trump come to the relief of many Democrats who felt she was too cautious and scripted when she first came to the White House.

But while political momentum is building for Ms. Harris, she is also navigating a difficult balancing act in not spotlighting the messaging limitations of her boss.

On Wednesday in Dallas, the crowd gasped when Ms. Harris first mentioned Mr. Trump’s name about midway through her speech. She noted that he had appointed three justices to the Supreme Court who joined the majority in overturning Roe v. Wade.

Sonia Southerland, a 69-year-old member of the sorority, said she was struck by how Ms. Harris explained the stakes of the election, specifically his potential plans for a second term.

“We can take that message back to our communities,” Ms. Southerland said, “back to our families, back to our big and little girls, and help them to understand what is happening in this country at this moment.”

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Prominent figures, including actor George Clooney and Senator Peter Welch (D-Vt.), are calling for President Joe Biden to step aside in the upcoming presidential race, advocating for a new Democratic nominee. These calls for change come as Biden concludes a three-day NATO summit, following what many perceived as a lackluster performance in his debate against former President Donald Trump in their first presidential debate.

Biden will host a post-NATO summit press conference Wednesday night at 5:30 p.m. ET.

Yahoo Finance senior columnist Rick Newman explains why this press conference will serve as a crucial test for Biden, examining the potential implications of Biden’s performance on voter perception and party support.

Read more about the calls for Biden to step aside from the 2024 presidential race:
Biden-Trump debate sparks Democratic party concerns
Top concerns around a last-minute Biden exit from election
Biden’s 2024 hopes ‘on collision course’ with Democrats’ fears
2024 election may be a ‘bloodbath’ for Dems if Biden runs

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Catalysts.

This post was written by Angel Smith

Video Transcript

Turning now to President Biden, facing a key test as he set to close out the NATO summit with a press conference at 5:30 p.m. Eastern time today.

This coming as he just lost support from actor George Clooney, the actor writing in an op ed for The New York Times quote, We are not going to win in November with this president calling on top Democrats to ask Biden to voluntarily step aside.

We also had the Senator Peter Welch, also calling for President Biden to step aside in the race, wrote an op ed for The Washington Post.

This is significant because it’s the first Democratic senator coming out calling for President Biden to step aside in the race.

So where do we go from here?

We want to bring in our very own Rick Newman and Rick.

It’s another day and more pressure, obviously, continuing out to mount here on President Biden to step aside in the race.

Senility watch continues, I guess, is the way I would put it.

Regrettably, So Biden has this press conference today at 5:30 p.m.

This is going to be at the end of the three day NATO summit in Washington DC.

This is the type of event that in North all times most people wouldn’t pay any attention to.

The You know, the NATO member nations did accomplish a few important things at this conference.

For one thing, they said, Ukraine will become a member of NATO at some point.

We don’t know when, but that is a strong statement of support for Ukraine and its war against Russia.

But that’s not what people are going to be watching for.

Obviously, when Biden takes does his press conference at 530.

I mean, the pressure is incredible, given that we’re just a few months before the election here.

So Biden has to prove he has total recall of all the names of the people he talked with this week.

He’s not going to mix up any facts.

He has to show that he can keep his train of thought and he is going to get hammered by the press because, I mean, this is this is now the cognitive test.

I mean, Biden hasn’t done the sort of cognitive test Trump claims to have done, which I don’t think Trump actually did.

But he is now going to face a cognitive test every time he goes on live TV.

So we will see how he does today.

And I guess if Biden has another slip up like he did during the June 27th debate, um, I mean, that could be the thing that finally brings his campaign to an end and gets us to a replacement candidate.

And if he, uh, if he does, really?

Well, um, I’m I’m not sure that puts any doubts to rest.

So, um, a very awkward position for Biden to be in.

I’m curious about the strategy from the side of Democrats here.

I just want to know in a couple of years when Democrats are chatting at the Thanksgiving table about this moment in time, are they going to look at?

This is a moment that the Democratic strategy to not fully support Biden was one that lost the election and gave it over to Trump, or is something that was an effective move to save the Democratic Party this election cycle.

I mean, I love the question, Mattie, you’re sort of trying to step out of the moment and say, What the heck is actually going on here?

I think it depends on the outcome.

If Biden stays in this race and then loses to Trump, he is going to be a sort of a Democratic villain for a long time.

Um, because it’s clear that a lot of Democrats want to see a younger candidate.

And, by the way, there are some very promising younger Democrats.

I mean, there are some governors who are very popular in their home states of Pennsylvania and Michigan, For example, Um, there are people in Biden’s Cabinet who are very capable and and in some sense Biden just won’t get out of the way, uh, and let a younger generation step up.

So if he stays in the race and he loses, um, then Biden’s a villain.

If Biden does step aside, then it depends on whether his replacement wins or loses.

So if he steps aside and and the next Democrat who steps in defeats Donald Trump, it’ll it’ll look like while Biden.

It took some convincing, but he he manned up and he did the right thing.

And then if that person loses, it’ll be like, Oh my God, there’s no Democrat who can save this party, so it really depends.

I mean, we’re really at pivotal moments here on a historic basis during just the next few days and weeks.

Yeah, we got to run, Rick, but it really makes you wonder why we waited to have this conversation.

Now, thank you so much for joining us.

As always.

We appreciate it.