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Democratic leaders are said to be planning to hold a crisis meeting this weekend to discuss Joe Biden’s future on the presidential ticket, after his make-or-break ABC News interview did little to dampen concerns within his party.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is set to meet virtually with committee ranking members at 2pm on Sunday afternoon, three sources told NBC News.
The meeting, which was abruptly scheduled on Friday night, is not part of any regular scheduled gatherings and comes just one day before Congress returns to session after the July 4 holiday.
One of the insiders told the outlet that the meeting will focus on Biden’s future as the Democratic party’s candidate to take on Donald Trump in November’s 2024 election, in the wake of his disastrous debate performance last week.
The meeting comes as five House Democrats have now publicly called for Biden to step aside and a Democratic senator is said to be organizing for a group of lawmakers to meet next week to discuss next steps for the party.
Virginia Senator Mark Warner has told colleagues that Biden can no longer stay in the race and is working to gather a group of lawmakers to come together to ask the president to step aside, The Washington Post reported.
While Warner has not confirmed the report, his office said in a statement that he “believes these are critical days for the president’s campaign, and he has made that clear to the White House.”
To date, no sitting Democratic senator – including Warner – has publicly called for Biden to withdraw from the race.
However, a growing number of Democratic congress members have.
On Saturday, Minnesota congresswoman Angie Craig became the fifth House Democrat to urge Biden to step aside, warning that there is “simply too much at stake to risk a second Donald Trump presidency”.
“As an elected leader, I feel a responsibility to be honest about what I believe, even when it’s hard to hear. President Biden is a good man & I appreciate his lifetime of service. But I believe he should step aside for the next generation of leadership,” she said in a statement posted on X.
“This is not a decision I’ve come to lightly, but there is simply too much at stake to risk a second Donald Trump presidency. That’s why I respectfully call on President Biden to step aside as the Democratic nominee for a second term as president and allow for a new generation of leaders to step forward.”
Despite the growing calls, Biden has so far vowed to stay in the race until the bitter end, telling ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on Friday that he still doesn’t “think anybody’s more qualified to be president or win this race than me”.
Maintaining that he is “completely ruling out” exiting the 2024 race, he insisted that all the Democratic leaders he has spoken with have urged him to stay put.
“They all said I should stay in the race... none of the people said I should leave,” he said.
In the high-stakes interview, the president repeatedly sought to brush off his debate performance – where he repeatedly lost his train of thought, stumbled over answers and sounded hoarse – as just “a bad night” because he was suffering from a “bad cold”.
“I was sick. I was feeling terrible,” he said, adding that doctors had tested him for Covid or other viruses. “I just had a really bad cold.”
“I just had a bad night,” he added.
Yet, after being repeatedly pressed, the president refused to commit to taking a cognitive test to put his party and prospective voters’ minds at ease about his competence for the job.
“Look. I have a cognitive test every single day. Every day I have that test: everything I do,” he said.
“You know, not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world.”
Biden’s campaign has taken the interview as a win, with deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks telling MSNBC on Saturday that the president “showed up” and “defied expectations”.
But this confidence isn’t matched by many Democratic insiders who have given a far less positive verdict.
As one longtime Democratic donor bundler put it to The Daily Beast: “This was his Alamo, and he’s going down like Davey Crocket.”
