It was far from a perfect performance, but President Joe Biden used his Thursday evening press conference as a preview of the arguments he will deploy in the coming days, weeks, and months, as fellow Democrats’ calls for him to step aside persist—and as his refusal to do so is likely to harden.
“I’m determined I’m running,” Biden said during a question-and-answer session with reporters that lasted for nearly an hour. “But I think it’s important that I allay fears, let them see me out there.” If he failed to do so entirely, he also displayed an obvious command of foreign policy. In the plainest terms, he was far more with it than during last month’s debate with Donald Trump, which has led to an explosion of anxiety about his fitness for the presidency—and the presidential campaign.
“This is a very strong performance,” Democratic strategist and former Obama administration official Joel M. Rubin wrote in a social media post. He said that Biden had given “a master class in how foreign policy and domestic policy intersect.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Perhaps that was something of an overstatement. At a NATO event earlier in the day, Biden introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, standing beside him, as “President Putin,” the Russian leader who invaded Ukraine in 2022. In response to the first question from a reporter at the ensuing press conference, Biden made reference to “Vice President Trump,” a remark that instantly went viral and has led to a profusion of internet memes. His vice president is Kamala Harris, who many Democrats think should replace Biden at the top of the ticket, but Thursday evening seemed to suggest that Biden was not seriously entertaining that possibility. “I’m in good shape,” he said.
As efforts to persuade him to step aside have mounted, Biden has grown increasingly recalcitrant. He used Thursday as a showcase of his foreign policy prowess. If he sometimes stumbled, he also displayed sufficient mastery of detail to remind detractors of his expertise.
The president discounted reports that, last week, he said at a summit of Democratic governors that he needed to go to bed by 8 p.m. He meant, he now elaborated, that he simply had to be more thoughtful about a grueling schedule that has included shuttle diplomacy intended to defuse conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. “I just got to pace myself a bit more,” he said.
In recent days, there has been rampant speculation about the several visits of a Parkinson’s disease expert to the White House. Earlier this week, Biden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, has said that he has not been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. On Thursday evening, Biden said he took a neurological exam “as recently as February.”
While he seemed to acknowledge that his age had become a political flashpoint, he also touted his first-term record, using it as an argument for another four years in the Oval Office. “I’ve got to finish this job,” he said. “Because there’s so much at stake.”
Reactions from Democrats seemed to suggest that while the press conference was not a debacle, it was also not a resounding success.
“Biden could have stood on his head and recited the Constitution backwards during the NATO press conference and for some, it still would not have been enough,” said Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former Atlanta mayor and Biden administration official. “Democracy is on the line. Let’s support our nominee and preserve it.”
But for others in the same party, Biden must step aside precisely because defeating Trump is of such paramount importance. As the press conference concluded, three U.S. representatives: Rep. Eric Sorensen (D-IL), Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), and Rep. Scott Peters (D-CA), joined the growing number of Democrats calling for Biden to end his reelection campaign.
“Joe Biden ran for President with the purpose of putting country over party,” Sorensen said in a statement. “Today, I am asking him to do that again.”
