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Joe Biden has held crisis talks over his future with the top House Democrat, as the US president tries to silence calls from lawmakers in his own party for him to abandon his re-election bid against Donald Trump.
Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the US House of Representatives, said he had relayed to Biden the “full breadth of insight, heartfelt perspectives and conclusions about the path forward”, according to a letter he sent to colleagues on Friday.
Jeffries did not say whether he had joined nearly two dozen House Democrats calling for the president to quit the race, but the meeting late on Thursday was the first sign of movement by congressional leadership since Biden’s damaging debate performance sparked panic in the party.
Biden spoke on Friday with members of the Hispanic and Asian Pacific American caucuses, according to people familiar with the discussions, and will hold a virtual meeting with the New Democrats, a self-styled “pragmatic” group, on Saturday. House Democrats had been clamouring for such calls since the June 27 debate.
Biden’s team had hoped an hour-long news conference on Thursday would end the rebellion. Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz claimed it brought a fundraising boost, including “nearly 40,000 grassroots donations” and a seven-fold rise in online donations during the press conference.
But while the president gave some detailed answers, he also referred to Kamala Harris as “vice-president Trump”, just hours after introducing Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to a Nato audience as “President Putin”.
Mike Levin, a House Democrat who represents a swing district in California, directly told Biden to step aside on the Friday call with the Hispanic caucus members, according to a person familiar with the discussion.
California Senator Alex Padilla, who was also on the call, then posted on X that Biden had “had our communities’ backs over the last three years and we’ll have his this November”.
Jeffries’s meeting came amid deepening alarm among high-profile donors, who have pushed him and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer to confront Biden directly and tell him to withdraw from the 2024 race.
At least five more House Democrats have now called on Biden to withdraw since Thursday’s press conference, including Connecticut’s Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee.
Eric Sorensen of Illinois, Brittany Pettersen of Colorado, and Scott Peters of California also joined in calling for the president to step aside.
“Please pass the torch to one of our many capable Democratic leaders so we have the best chance to defeat Donald Trump, who is the greatest threat to the foundation of this country that we have ever faced,” Pettersen, a first-term member, wrote in a statement.
Several other Democratic lawmakers have privately expressed worries about Biden’s fitness for office in recent days, and have weighed going public with their concerns.
A report from CBS News on Thursday said that dozens of more Democratic lawmakers could join the rebellion against Biden in the coming days.
Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi sent shockwaves through Washington earlier this week when she urged Biden to make a decision on his candidacy quickly, “because time is running short”.
Jim Clyburn, the South Carolina congressman whose endorsement was critical for Biden’s 2020 campaign, told NBC News on Friday that while he was behind the president, if Biden “decides to change his mind later on, then we will respond to that”.
The president was continuing to campaign on Friday, with a scheduled stop in Detroit, Michigan. On Monday he will head to an event in Austin, Texas, before sitting down for another national television interview.
Although the revolt against his candidacy has been more pronounced in the House, several senators have joined the chorus as well, including Michael Bennet of Colorado and Peter Welch of Vermont.
Polling since the debate shows that the race between Biden and Trump remains tight nationally, although the Republican candidate is leading in most battleground states. Several surveys show that most people — including most Democrats — think Biden should be replaced by a younger candidate.
Trump has maintained a relatively low profile since the debate, allowing media attention to focus squarely on Biden’s weaknesses. But the former president is set to return to centre stage next week with the start of the Republican National Convention on Monday.
In a flurry of posts on his Truth Social platform on Friday, Trump said he “tried being as nice as possible” to Biden during the debate, and insisted it was the president’s decision “alone” whether he should step aside. But Trump also called on the president to submit to a “cognitive test”, and vowed to do the same, adding: “For the first time we’ll be a team, and do it for the good of the country.”
Additional reporting by Lauren Fedor in New York
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