July 5 (UPI) — President Joe Biden on Friday held a campaign rally in the battleground state of Wisconsin ahead of his highly anticipated interview with ABC News and amid increased pressure for him to withdraw from the race.
Addressing a crowd of supporters enthusiastically chanting, “Let’s go, Joe!” Biden didn’t shy from the controversy of his debate performance but doubled down on his commitment to continue running and beat Donald Trump in November.
“I can’t say it was my best performance, but since then there’s been a lot of speculation — what’s Joe going to do?” he said. “Well here’s my answer: I am running, and I’m going to win again.”
The 81-year-old president also brushed aside concerns about his age by emphasizing his accomplishments.
“Was I too old to relieve student debt for nearly 5 million Americans and grow the economy? Too old to put the first Black woman on the Supreme Court in the United States of America?” Biden asked the crowd.
Biden faces mounting pressure from members of his own party to step down following his concerning performance at the first presidential debate. He’ll get another chance to prove his mental and physical fitness in an unscripted interview with ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos.
The first excerpts of that interview will air on World News Tonight, and the full interview will be broadcast on ABC News Network at 8 p.m. EDT Friday.
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., who has stood by Biden in the fallout of the debate, posted nine questions on X that Stephanopoulos should ask Biden in an apparent dig against Donald Trump.
Among his suggestions were, “Ever [have sex with] a porn star? Ever bribe one? Been impeached?” followed by, “Ever beat Trump?”
Fetterman previously called on fellow Democrats to “chill … out” over the debate and told them that abandoning Biden was the “dumbest [thing] I’ve ever heard.”
The Pennsylvania congressman dealt with his own mental fitness controversy during his 2022 campaign for senate against TV personality Dr. Mehmet Oz.
Fetterman notably struggled to remain coherent during their debate after suffering a stroke.
CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta in an op-ed column called for Biden to undergo “detailed cognitive and movement disorder testing” and to release the results to the public.
Gupta said his concern over Biden’s debate performance was shared with numerous medical colleagues.
“From a neurological standpoint, we were concerned with his confused rambling; sudden loss of concentration in the middle of a sentence; halting speech and absence of facial animation, resulting at times in a flat, open-mouthed expression,” Gupta wrote, noting these observations are “not in any way diagnostic of something deeper.”
Gupta also drew attention to the fact that Biden previously disclosed undergoing surgery for two separate brain aneurysm in 1988, and there is some evidence that they might increase the risk of delayed cognition later in life.
MSNBC host Joy Reid, meanwhile, expressed a different sentiment. In a post on TikTok Thursday, she compared Trump to Adolf Hitler and said she would vote for Biden even if he was “in a coma.”
“I don’t even really, in particular, like the guy. A lot of his policies? Don’t like them, [but] he’s not Donald Trump,” Reid said.
Twenty-three Democratic governors met Biden Wednesday either virtually or in person at the White House with most of them pledging their support for him to stay in the race.
Govs. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Wes Moore of Maryland and Kathy Hochul of New York told reporters at the meeting they were backing Biden because “the stakes could not be higher.”
California Gov. Gavin Newson, while campaigning for Biden in Michigan Thursday, said, “There was no one that walked out of that and didn’t say, ‘We’ve got your back, Mr. President.’ No one. Not one.”
More that half a dozen governors in the meeting did express concern about Biden’s waning support since the debate, according to ABC News.
CNN also reported several governors were frustrated about loyalty statements from their fellow governors.
The Democratic Party also has to contend with unrest among wealthy donors. Abigail Disney, an heiress to the Disney family fortune, told CNBC Thursday that she would withhold political donations to the party she’s funded for years unless Biden steps down.
“I intend to stop any contributions to the party unless and until they replace Biden at the top of the ticket. This is realism, not disrespect. Biden is a good man and has served his country admirably, but the stakes are far too high,” Disney said in a statement, noting she is “absolutely certain” Democrats will lose if Biden stays in the race.
Disney proposed Vice President Kamala Harris as a viable alternative.
“If Democrats would tolerate any of her perceived shortcomings even one tenth as much as they have tolerated Biden’s (and let’s not kid ourselves about where race and gender figure in that inequity) and if Democrats can find a way to stop quibbling and rally around her, we can win this election by a lot,” she said.
Disney previously donated $50,000 to the Jane Fonda Climate political action committee in April and $150,000 to Planned Parenthood Votes in 2014.
Another major Democratic supporter, Gideon Stein, president of the Moriah Fund, also said he would pause planned donations of $3.5 million to nonprofits and political organizations aligned with Biden’s campaign.
“Virtually every major donor I’ve talked to believes that we need a new candidate in order to defeat Donald Trump,” Stein said.
