Joe Biden’s Press Conference Reactions Highlight Democratic Party Divisions

President Joe Biden’s performance at an hourlong press conference Thursday produced opposite reactions within the Democratic Party, underscoring the lingering internal divide over whether Biden should stay in the race or step aside to give someone else a chance to defeat Donald Trump.

The president’s detailed answers to tough foreign policy questions from reporters at the NATO Summit in Washington left Biden campaign officials convinced that he did enough to reassure Democrats calling on him to drop out of the race.

“[Biden] did what he needed to do and then some,” a Biden campaign official told Newsweek, speaking on background to provide a candid assessment of Biden’s performance at the press conference. The president “held his own in a very extended exchange of detailed policy questions and threw some good punches at Trump,” the official added.

But soon after Biden’s press conference concluded, Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, became the latest Democratic official to publicly call on the president to exit the race.

“The 2024 election will define the future of American democracy, and we must put forth the strongest candidate possible to confront the threat posed by Trump’s promised MAGA authoritarianism,” Himes said in a statement on X.

“I no longer believe that is Joe Biden, and I hope that, as he has throughout a lifetime of public service, he will continue to put our nation first and, as he promised, make way for a new generation of leaders,” Himes said.

Himes joined a growing group of more than a dozen House Democrats who have said Biden should end his bid for a second term. Several dozen other House Democrats are reportedly weighing going public with calls for Biden to drop out following his poor performance in the presidential debate with presumptive Republican nominee Trump last month.

In the debate, Biden stumbled and frequently lost his train of thought, fueling concerns from voters and Democratic Party officials that the president is too old to serve a second term.

At 81 years old, Biden is the oldest president in U.S. history. Trump is 78 and would be the second oldest after Biden if he wins a second term. Democratic leaders in the House and Senate have not yet abandoned Biden in the weeks since the debate. But the public defections from rank-and-file Democrats highlight how differently many in the party view the crisis compared to Biden and his political team.

While a growing number of Democrats remain concerned that Biden can’t win in November, the president gave an opposite analysis of the state of the race in his press conference Thursday. Biden said he still believed he could beat Trump in November. The president also said he would not consider dropping out if polls showed that Vice President Kamala Harris stood a better chance of beating Trump.

“No, not unless they came back and said, ‘there’s no way you can win.’ No one’s saying that,” Biden said, when asked about the possibility of making way for Harris to take over the top of the ticket.

Biden campaign officials viewed the NATO press conference as an opportunity for the president to showcase his command of complex foreign policy issues, an area where the campaign believes Biden has a clear advantage over Trump.

The press conference, an official event that was organized by the White House, also represented a high-profile opportunity for Biden to appear before the media in an unscripted setting, according to multiple campaign officials. Biden gave his first post-debate television interview to ABC last week, but it did little to calm Democrats worried that he wasn’t up to the job of beating Trump.

Most of Biden’s other major events after the debate were carefully choreographed speeches where he read off a teleprompter. The strategy frustrated many Democrats who privately questioned why the White House and campaign were not putting him out more in unscripted settings with voters and the press so that Biden could demonstrate his ability to think on his feet without relying on prepared remarks.

With the NATO press conference, campaign officials and allies believe Biden gave Democrats the type of performance they wanted to see from the president. Biden stumbled at times, including when he mixed up Harris’ and Trump’s names. Still, he received better reviews Thursday from many party insiders than he did after his ABC interview. But the defection by Himes suggested it may not be enough to put concerns about Biden’s age to rest.