President Joe Biden referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “President Putin” Thursday, as more members of his Democrat Party called on the oldest president in U.S. history to drop his reelection bid.
“And now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine, who has as much courage as he has determination, ladies and gentlemen, President Putin,” said Biden at the NATO summit in Washington, which drew gasps from those in the room.
“Going to beat President Putin, President Zelenskyy. I am so focused on beating Putin,” said Biden, trying to correct himself.
The glaring error came shortly before a highly anticipated news conference at which Joe Biden hoped to ease the fears of fellow Democrats that he could no longer beat GOP Donald Trump in the November election or lead the country for another four-year term.
As yet, 13 of the 213 Democrats in the House of Representatives and one of the Senate’s 51 Dems have appealed to the public to President Biden to withdraw from the presidential race.
Three familiar sources say top United Auto Workers union officials met Thursday to discuss their concerns with his candidacy after endorsing Biden in January.
The union, which numbers 400,000, has a massive presence in industrial states, including Michigan, that Joe Biden will need to carry to win reelection.
During his solo news conference Thursday night, Joe Biden must respond to questions on a wide range of topics, including his fitness for four more years in the White House.
Biden’s campaign has been pressured for two weeks since the debate
The Biden campaign has been under pressure for two weeks since his abysmal debate performance against President Donald Trump, his GOP rival.
Top advisers met with Senate Democrats to attempt to halt further defections. His campaign contended the debate hasn’t dramatically shifted the race, even while it laid out a sliver of a path to reelection that acknowledged it faced a mountainous climb in several states he won in 2020.
Prior to the news conference, four additional House Democrats—Greg Stanton of Arizona, Hillary Scholten of Michigan, Brad Schneider of Illinois, and Ed Case of Hawaii—called on Biden to halt his campaign.
“For our country’s sake, it is time for the President to pass the torch to a new generation of leaders,” said Stanton in a prepared statement.
Others halted short of suggesting Biden drop out, even while they questioned his ability to lead the country. “I doubt the President’s judgment about his health, his fitness to do the job, and whether he is the one making important decisions about our country, rather than unelected advisors,” said Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in a statement.
None of the congressional party leaders have called for Joe Biden to end his candidacy, although former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi declined to say he should stay in the race on Wednesday.
Some Democrats in the Senate stated they were still unsure about President Biden’s ability to win after meeting with Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s campaign chair, and other top aides.
According to a source with knowledge of the issue, the Biden campaign has commissioned a survey to test how Vice President Kamala Harris would perform if she were to replace the president at the head of the ticket.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week discovered that Harris would not fare better than Biden if she were the Democratic Party nominee, as both were tied statistically with Donald Trump.According to The New York Times, some longtime advisers were considering different ways to convince him to drop out of the reelection race. At the same time, an NBC News report stated that some campaign staffers believed he had no chance of winning the election.
