Biden’s family reportedly discussing possible ‘exit’ plan as top aide says president is ‘best person’ to beat Trump – live | US elections 2024
Biden's family has begun discussing possible 'exit' plan - report
No sooner had Biden’s campaign manager finished an interview insisting the president would “absolutely” remain the party’s nominee than NBC news hit publish on a report suggesting Biden’s family has begun discussing an “exit” plan, citing “two people familiar” with the situation.
The report suggests Biden has yet to make a final decision, but that his closest allies believe he is likely to step aside.
According to NBC News, the family members want a plan that would both “put the party in the best position” to defeat Trump while “also being worthy of the more than five decades he has served the country in elected office”.
“The prospect of Biden’s considering stepping aside, much less that his family is gaming out a possible exit plan, is an extraordinary development that comes after he has repeatedly said he would not relinquish his position as the presumptive nominee of the party,” the report states.
The White House denied the report. “That is not happening, period,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said.
Key events
Despite the torrent of calls for Biden to step aside, it is also true that he has many supporters who want to see him remain the nominee. Interestingly, some of his staunchest support has come from progressives, the group of people he had clashed with the hardest as pivoted to the center in preparation for a re-election bid.
Speaking on a live Instagram video last night, New York congressman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez said Biden should remain in the race.
.@AOC did an IG live last night calling for Joe Biden to stay in the 2024 race. She warned that if he exits, it wouldn’t be a smooth elevation of Kamala Harris and it’d be a chaotic fight. She said Democrats calling for this want to replace not just him but the entire ticket.
She warned that removing Biden would create chaos, including a campaign to also remove his vice president, Kamala Harris.
AOC is deep into an IG live arguing that "elites" pushing Biden to step back plan to remove Kamala from the ballot next. She says everyone is in on it, this would create chaos, and so Biden must remain the nominee.
The report is consequential because Biden relies heavily on his family to make major political decisions. They are his inner circle and his brain trust and include his wife, Jill Biden, his only living son, Hunter Biden, and his sister, Valerie Biden.
Behind the scenes, those close to Biden, his family and top allies, are reportedly seething over the way he is being treated. They believe the effort to dislodge him from the campaign has been “backhanded and disrespectful” according to the NBC report, which says the family is “distraught and moving through the stages of anger and grief over how people they perceived to be friends have treated the president.”
“There was a much more dignified way to do this if this is what they wanted,” a Biden ally told NBC News. “This is no way to treat a public servant who has done a lot for this country.”
Biden's family has begun discussing possible 'exit' plan - report
No sooner had Biden’s campaign manager finished an interview insisting the president would “absolutely” remain the party’s nominee than NBC news hit publish on a report suggesting Biden’s family has begun discussing an “exit” plan, citing “two people familiar” with the situation.
The report suggests Biden has yet to make a final decision, but that his closest allies believe he is likely to step aside.
According to NBC News, the family members want a plan that would both “put the party in the best position” to defeat Trump while “also being worthy of the more than five decades he has served the country in elected office”.
“The prospect of Biden’s considering stepping aside, much less that his family is gaming out a possible exit plan, is an extraordinary development that comes after he has repeatedly said he would not relinquish his position as the presumptive nominee of the party,” the report states.
The White House denied the report. “That is not happening, period,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said.
As speculation swirls around Biden’s political future, he continues to carry forth with his duties as president.
According to a White House official: “The president has been briefed on the CrowdStrike outage and his team is in touch with CrowdStrike and impacted entities. His team is engaged across the interagency to get sector by sector updates throughout the day and is standing by to provide assistance as needed.
The President was also briefed on the drone attack overnight in Tel Aviv.”
At the end of the interview, O’Malley Dillon is asked directly if there was “any chance” Biden exits the race at “any point.”
“You have heard from the president directly time and again,” she said, with her boss likely tuning in. “He is in this race to win and he is our nominee and he’s going to be our president for a second-term.”
To borrow a line from Dumb and Dumber’s Lloyd Christmas: “So you’re telling me there’s a chance.”
O’Malley Dillon is attempting to knock down the flurry of reporting over the last 36 hours by several outlets that says the president is not only considering dropping out of the race, but is planning to do so possibly as soon as this weekend. In the interview, she suggests the reporting is based on ill-informed sources.
For every bad story and leak and someone that thinks they know about something that happened with the president in some conversation that he’s not having, there is a person a senator, a governor, a real person that is out there in Milwaukee making the case, that is in an a battleground state holding an event, mayors from all across the country, labor, that are standing with him that have members in every single state. So there is no doubt we need to move forward. There is no doubt we have to go back to focusing on taking on Donald Trump because there’s too much at stake.
Transcripts have been shared of the president’s combative exchanges with lawmakers during conversations with a group of moderate House Democrats as well as with a group of Hispanic Democrats. There are also anonymously-sourced reports that House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as well as former president Barack Obama, have all weighed in to suggest Biden should not continue as the party’s nominee.
Campaign manager says Team Biden doesn't have its 'head in the sand'
O’Malley Dillon continues to stress that Biden has “work to do” but said the campaign doesn’t have its “head in the sand.” They know what needs to be done – and are doing it.
“For every person that has said that they are concerned, we’ve had another person that’s seen him and they’ve said you are our guy and we want to be with you,” she said, emphasizing that Biden’s campaign trail appearances have been re-assuring to the campaign.
She added: “The more and more people that see Joe Biden out there post-debate they are reassured.”
The appearance seems to be a last-ditch effort to quiet speculation that the president is preparing to withdraw.
“This is definitely a hard period for the campaign,” O’Malley Dillon she said, adding that she was sure the people calling on Biden to leave the race wanted the same thing – to beat Trump – but reiterated that Biden was the Democrat best-suited to do so.
Willie Geist, another host, asked O’Malley Dillon how the campaign is confronting concerns among Democrats worried about the downstream effect of running behind an unpopular president who nearly two-thirds of Democrats want to see replaced. He also notes that many Democratic senators are running well ahead of Biden in key battleground states.
O’Malley Dillon acknowledges that the campaign has faced some “tough weeks” but said it was built for a close race against Trump.
“There is work to do, no doubt,” she said. “We know that we’ve slipped a bit from the debate and we know that the president has to prove to the American people exactly what he believes: that he’s in it to win it.”
The host, Mika Brzezinski, pressed O’Malley Dillion on how the campaign is contending by the pressure campaign led by Democratic heavyweights, the former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, who are increasingly pessimistic that Biden can win the White House in November.
“We also have to take seriously the concerns that people are expressing but the way to get past them is to get back to the business of beating Donald Trump and setting up that clear choice,” she said.
She also teased an endorsement from a “very significant national organization,” later this afternoon.
Biden is 'best person to take on Trump', says campaign manager
Biden campaign manager, Jenn O’Malley Dillon, said Joe Biden is the “leader of our campaign and the country” during an interview right now on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the president’s favorite show,
“He is the best person to take on Donald Trump and prosecute that case,” she said.
The segment opened with a long rehashing of all the news reports suggesting Biden is open to stepping aside, amid dismal polling and growing calls for him to not be the nominee, including Montana senator Jon Tester, one of the chamber’s most vulnerable Democrats.
Facebook founder says Trump's fist pump after shooting 'one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen'
Good morning and welcome to our liveblog coverage. The 2024 Republican national convention in Milwaukee ended last night with a meandering 90 plus-minute speech by Donald Trump, after he formally accepted the Republican nomination for a third time.
Self0-isolating in Delaware after testing positive for Covid, the US president is facing an all-out rebellion from his party. Joe Biden’s team insists he is not considering ending his re-election bid, but the walls appear to be closing in on the embattled 81-year-old.
Meanwhile, Republicans have never been more optimistic of their chances in November. The party left Milwaukee united, with a new heir apparent, the Ohio senator JD Vance, chosen to be Trump’s running mate. Donations have swelled, with a significant boost of support from the thanks will do tech world, including Elon Musk.
In an interview with Bloomberg on Friday, Mark Zuckerberg declined to make an endorsement, but called Trump’s reaction – raising a fist and mouthing fight, after his ear was bloodied by a bullet during the rally – “one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“It’s like hard to not get kind of emotional about that spirit and that fight, and I think that that’s why a lot of people like the guy,” he told Bloomberg.
Read more about Trump’s acceptance speech, which Joan Greve reports included harrowing recounting of the moment a would-be assassin fired at the former president onstage during a rally in Pennsylvania. Despite being billed as a unity speech, Trump often returned to the dark themes that have animated his election campaign.
