‘When you get knocked down, you get back up’: Biden tells supporters after shaky debate performance
In comments that came as close as any to addressing his stumbles against Trump in last night’s debate, Biden acknowledged that he is indeed old, but believes he can still beat the former president in the November election.
“I know I’m not a young man, to the state the obvious. Well, I know I don’t walk as easy as I used to, I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to, I don’t debate as well as I used to, but I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth,” the president said.
He went on:
I know right from wrong. I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done. I know, like millions of Americans, I know, when you get knocked down, you get back up.
Biden then made plain that he believed he can still do the job:
Folks, I give you my word as a Biden, I would not be running again if I didn’t believe with all my heart and soul I can do this job. Because, quite frankly, the stakes are too high.
Key events
Abortion was among the issues debated by Donald Trump and Joe Biden last night, with the Democratic president attempting to channel voters’ frustration at the fall of Roe v Wade against his Republican adversary.
This morning, Iowa’s supreme court allowed a six-week ban on the procedure to go into effect, making it the latest Republican-led state to cut off access at a point when many women do not yet know they are pregnant.
Here’s what Biden had to say about that, in a statement distributed by the White House:
This should never happen in America. Yet, this is exactly what is happening in states across the country since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. And it’s not stopping at the state level – Republican elected officials in Congress have proposed four national abortion bans while refusing to protect nationwide access to IVF and contraception.
Vice President Harris and I believe that women in every state must have the right to make deeply personal decisions about their health. We will continue to call on Congress to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade in federal law and stand firm against efforts made by Republican elected officials to undermine Americans’ fundamental freedoms.
And here’s more on the court’s ruling:
Nevada Democratic official blocks reporter from hearing voters’ criticism of Biden debate at rally
Kamala Harris is rallying voters this afternoon in Las Vegas, Nevada a critical swing state where polls have lately shown Joe Biden trailing Donald Trump.
As is often the case when the vice-president travels, she is joined by a pool of reporters, including Simon J. Levien of the New York Times, who distribute details of their travels to other outlets, through mailing lists maintained by the White House.
In his latest report, Levien said he was trying to interview attendees at the event prior to Harris’s speech, but in two instances when someone would express a critical view of the president’s performance at his debate last night, Clio Calvo-Platero, the deputy communications director for Biden’s campaign in the state, would try to stop the interview.
Here’s how Levien said it went:
Calvo-Platero followed your pooler as he interviewed voters and recorded the interviews.
Twice she tried to end the interviews when the voters began to criticize Biden.
Democratic voter Amy Nelson said that the debate was “terrible.”
“You can’t tell me that there’s not anyone better —” Nelson said, hoping there was another candidate who could take his place.
“We’re at a Joe Biden event, so I’m going to cut you off there, sorry,” Calvo-Platero said before Nelson finished her statement.
Stephen Stubbs, an undecided voter, criticized Mr. Biden’s “mental acuity.”
“Who’s running the country?” Stubbs recalled saying after watching the presidential debate. “Let Kamala in!” he added, hoping Biden would step down and nominate Harris as president.
Calvo-Platero said “I’m going to stop it here, sorry. If I can, it’s a Biden event. Is that okay?”
Joe Biden’s fellow Democrats are downplaying the president’s stumbles in the debate last night, but government officials at top American allies are less sanguine, the Guardian’s Patrick Wintour reports:
European politicians, already drowning in multiple crises of their own, were left shell-shocked and aghast at Joe Biden’s meandering performance in Thursday’s presidential debate, aware that a second Trump term had drawn that much nearer – with all that this implies for the rise of populism in the continent, the future of Nato, and for Ukraine and the Middle East.
The voices of despair came from across the mainstream political spectrum, interspersed with the odd call for Europe to prepare even more intensively for a Trump second coming.
“American democracy killed before our eyes by gerontocracy,” Guy Verhofstadt, a member of the European parliament and a former prime minister of Belgium, posted on X.
The German CDU foreign policy specialist Norbert Röttgen said: “This night will not be forgotten. The Democrats have to rethink their choices now. And Germany must prepare at full speed for an uncertain future. If we don’t take responsibility for European security now, no one will.”
The Polish foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, issued the most delphic advice about the importance of planning succession. “Marcus Aurelius was a great emperor but he screwed up his succession by passing the baton to his feckless son Commodus (he from the Gladiator). Whose disastrous rule started Rome’s decline. It’s important to manage one’s ride into the sunset.” Whether Barack Obama or Biden was cast in the role of Aurelius was unclear.
Obama after Biden’s performance in Atlanta: ‘Bad debate nights happen’
In a post on X, Joe Biden’s former boss Barack Obama downplayed the importance of his struggles on the debate stage last night:
Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know. But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself. Between someone who tells the truth; who knows right from wrong and will give it to the…
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) June 28, 2024
Indeed, Obama knows what he’s talking about when it comes to underperforming in debates as an incumbent president:
After last night’s debate, Joe Biden’s official account on X shared video clips mocking Donald Trump, and of the president speaking to supporters in Atlanta.
Tellingly, they published nothing showing Biden on the CNN stage, but they’ve now shared a couple clips of his speech this afternoon to supporters in Raleigh. If you caught the debate last night, they’re worth watching, as they show a very different president than the one at the debate.
Here’s the part where he attacks Trump for lying:
And where Biden dismisses him as having “the morals of an alley cat”:
The White House pool reporter following Biden says that he was interrupted four times by pro-Palestinian protesters.
The president managed to shake off their interruptions and continue his speech, while the crowd drowned them out with chants of “four more years!”
His staff has generally managed to keep such protesters out of Biden’s speeches in recent months, after he was interrupted repeatedly at the start of the year. Nonetheless, opposition to his support for Israel in its war on Gaza is another issue that could sap his support in crucial states. Here’s more on that:
Biden is now walking offstage with the first lady as Tom Petty’s I won’t back down plays.
Despite dealing with a cough and several interruptions by who appeared to be protesters, Biden pulled off a notably forceful speech that was a far cry from his performance on the debate stage in Atlanta just hours before.
‘When you get knocked down, you get back up’: Biden tells supporters after shaky debate performance
In comments that came as close as any to addressing his stumbles against Trump in last night’s debate, Biden acknowledged that he is indeed old, but believes he can still beat the former president in the November election.
“I know I’m not a young man, to the state the obvious. Well, I know I don’t walk as easy as I used to, I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to, I don’t debate as well as I used to, but I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth,” the president said.
He went on:
I know right from wrong. I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done. I know, like millions of Americans, I know, when you get knocked down, you get back up.
Biden then made plain that he believed he can still do the job:
Folks, I give you my word as a Biden, I would not be running again if I didn’t believe with all my heart and soul I can do this job. Because, quite frankly, the stakes are too high.
Crowd chants ‘lock him up’ as Biden calls Trump a ‘one-man crime wave’
Biden laid into Trump over his many legal troubles, calling him a “one-man crime wave” – and prompting the Democratic crowd to chant “lock him up!”
It harkens back to 2016, when crowds at Trump rallies chanted “lock her up” as he attacked his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton for various alleged violations of the law.
“The only convicted criminal on stage last night was Donald Trump,” Biden said.
“When I thought about his 34 felony convictions, his sexual assault on a woman in a public place and his being fined $400m for business fraud, I thought to myself, Donald Trump isn’t just a convicted felon. Donald Trump is a one-man crime wave.”
“Lock him up! Lock him up!” the crowd chanted.
Biden says Trump set ‘a new record for the most lies told in a single debate’
Biden has now shifted to last night’s debate, and is attacking Trump for telling what was, in the president’s view, a record number of lies.
“Did you see Trump last night? … It’s sincerely a new record for the most lies told in a single debate,” Biden said.
He continued the attack:
He lied about the great economy he created. He lied about the pandemic he botched, killing millions of people. He closed businesses, he closed schools, losing their homes, people all over this country. America was flat on its back, so I told Trump that it was just one of two presidents in American history who left office at fewer jobs than he started. Herbert Hoover was the other one. That’s why I called him Donald Herbert Hoover Trump.