11 Days in July: Inside the All-Out Push to Save the Biden Campaign

WASHINGTON — Nothing President Joe Biden did seemed to work.

He delivered an angry, defensive rant on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” He showed foreign policy chops at a news conference. He wrote a long letter to “fellow Democrats” demanding an end to the calls for him to step aside. He confronted lawmakers on a Zoom call that devolved into a tense, heated exchange about his age and mental competency.

Eleven days ago, the president and his closest family members and advisers went on the offensive, determined to end what already had been nearly two weeks of hand-wringing over his listless performance at a debate June 27. The result was a flurry of interviews, rallies, defiant meetings with his closest allies and impromptu campaign stops — all intended to rebut the premise that he was too old and frail to win a second term.

Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times

But almost every step was undercut by his own fumbles and the steady drumbeat of calls from his friends and allies for him to step aside, even from loyalists like actor George Clooney. Together, it was evidence that nothing he was doing was having much impact. Biden was racing from place to place, but nothing was changing.

This story of the 11 days that Biden has spent trying to rescue his hopes for a second four years in the Oval Office is based on interviews with people close to him, including lawmakers, current and former aides, friends and others. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss one of the most difficult periods in Biden’s political life.

At the end of two hectic days in the 110-degree heat of Las Vegas this week, it all seemed to catch up with him. Biden was coughing during interviews and seemed almost as tired and scattered as he did during the debate June 27. At a campaign stop at a restaurant, he looked pale. He tested positive for COVID, canceled his final speech and flew back to his beach house in Delaware.

By Thursday, Biden’s flashes of anger had given way to what allies perceived as the beginnings of acceptance that he might lose. People close to him began privately predicting that the end of the campaign was near and that he might even drop out of the race within days.

Monday, July 8

Inside the White House and at the president’s campaign headquarters in Delaware, the mood was grim.

The July 4 holiday had not stopped calls for the president to step aside and allow another candidate to run against former President Donald Trump. The campaign team had hoped that an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC would make the issue of the president’s debate performance go away. It had not.

But that morning, Biden went on offense. In a letter sent to Democratic lawmakers at 9 a.m., he was blunt. There had been too much hand-wringing over his debate performance. Biden was done with all the talk about him dropping out of the race.

“I decline to do that,” he wrote, making it clear that he wanted the conversation about his health to be finished. “It’s time for it to end.”

It did not.

On Capitol Hill, the letter was received poorly by some Democratic members who saw it as the president dismissing what they viewed as legitimate concerns about the party’s chances in the fall. But Biden did not wait for their reaction before taking an even more aggressive move: calling in to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, ready for battle.

The idea, aides said later, was to take control of the story by making clear that he was not dropping out. But over the course of nearly 18 minutes, Biden raged against “the elites” he believed were trying to push him out. He dared his critics to “challenge me at the convention.” And he bragged about his crowd sizes.

“Come out with me. Watch me. Watch people react,” he told Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, the hosts. “You make a judgment. You make a judgment.”

The president’s wife, Jill Biden, tried to deliver the message in a softer way. At a brewery in Wilmington, North Carolina, she told reporters, “Joe has made it clear that he’s all-in.” She added, “I am all-in, too.”

But it was the president’s aggressive tone that dominated the headlines. Over the next two days, two more lawmakers went public. Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said it was “clear that he’s not the best person to carry the Democratic message.”

Rep. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey said, “I am asking that he declare that he won’t run for reelection.”

Wednesday, July 10

The day was already going poorly for the White House. Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the former House speaker, said that morning that it was “up to the president to decide” whether he would continue to run for reelection.

Biden’s aides were frustrated. Pelosi knew very well that Biden had already decided to stay in the race. She was deliberately sending a message, they thought. And then Clooney, a major Biden donor, wrote a guest essay in The New York Times with a devastating headline: “I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee.”

People close to Biden had tried for days to persuade Clooney not to publish his concerns, fearing that it would create exactly the furor that it did. In the essay, Clooney was even more brutal than the headline suggested.

“This is about age,” he wrote. “Nothing more. But also nothing that can be reversed. We are not going to win in November with this president.”

The article upended the Biden team’s hope that he had put the issue to rest. By the end of the day, four more high-profile Democrats turned on him.

“For the good of the country, I’m calling on President Biden to withdraw from the race,” said Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont.

Thursday, July 11

By the next day, the president and his aides were pinning their hopes on something Biden has done only rarely: a solo news conference, taking questions from the White House press corps.

White House officials were betting that the venue could play to the president’s strengths, even though it would be unscripted. It would come at the end of the NATO summit of leaders in Washington, where they were discussing global affairs, a topic that often energizes the foreign policy-minded president.

But it was also a very long day, filled with intense, closed-door discussions with more than two dozen of the president’s counterparts. Before the news conference would even start in the late evening, Biden would sit down with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine for a discussion about the way forward in the war against Russia.

It was there that Biden would make his first stumble of the day, introducing Zelenskyy by calling him “President Putin.” The quote was already zipping across social media before the news conference got underway.

For an hour, Biden parried with reporters who pressed him on his health, his age, his debate performance and the chances that he would drop out of the race. He stumbled over his words, at one point saying “Vice President Trump” when he meant “Vice President Harris.” But he also held his own on complicated foreign policy questions.

National security officials in the White House focused on the substance of the day, including announcements about new arms for Ukraine and unity among NATO members. But the president’s flubs got more attention, and the audience for the news conference was far smaller than the 50 million people who had watched the debate in June.

Moments after the news conference ended, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, issued a statement: “We must put forth the strongest candidate possible to confront the threat posed by Trump’s promised MAGA authoritarianism. I no longer believe that is Joe Biden.”

Seven Democrats followed suit that night.

Saturday, July 13

Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York arrived at Biden’s house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on Saturday with a grim message: Senators were deeply concerned about the president’s chances in November and the fates of Senate candidates should he remain at the top of the ticket.

Schumer was armed with polls showing bad news for Biden, including data that the president’s numbers in critical battleground states were dropping fast. The meeting was private, but Democrats inside and outside the campaign and the White House were bracing for another brutal weekend.

At 6:11 p.m., those fears temporarily abated when a gunman fired at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, grazing the former president’s ear, critically wounding two people in the bleachers and killing one person, a volunteer firefighter.

The assassination attempt silenced the public displays of Democratic anxiety as Biden delivered two back-to-back sets of remarks to the American people about the shooting over the course of the weekend.

“In America, we resolve our differences at the battol box,” he said Sunday night, apparently meaning “ballot box” as he read from a teleprompter in the Oval Office. “You know, that’s how we do it, at the battol box, not with bullets” he said, making the mistake again.

He also said he was glad that “former Trump” was not seriously injured, dropping the word “president” from his remarks.

Wednesday, July 17

It climbed to 110 degrees in Las Vegas on Biden’s second day in Nevada, a critical battleground state. He had already spent Tuesday trying to shore up support with Black voters by speaking to the NAACP convention and sitting for an interview.

On Wednesday morning, he was at it again, this time in an appeal to Latino voters and trying to ignore the questions about his age.

The first stop of the day was The Original Lindo Michoácan Restaurant, where “Latinos for Biden Harris” signs were posted on one wall. “Burbujas de Amor” by Juan Luis Guerra played loudly. The president moved through the restaurant, taking selfies with guests at three different booths.

Reporters shouted to the president as they were led out, asking for any response to a new call by Rep. Adam Schiff of California for him to step down. Biden did not answer.

After leaving the restaurant, he recorded an in-person radio interview with Luis Sandoval, the host of Univision’s radio show “Buena Vibra,” and was set to deliver a speech to the UnidosUS Annual Conference. After more than an hour of delay, it was clear something was wrong.

“I was just on the phone with President Biden, and he shared his deep disappointment at not being able to join us this afternoon,” Janet Murguía, the president and CEO of UnidosUS, told the audience. “He just tested positive for COVID.”

The speech canceled, the president’s motorcade headed for the Las Vegas airport. Crowded by Secret Service agents after the attempted assassination of his political opponent days earlier, Biden turned to gathered reporters and gave a thumbs-up. “I feel good,” he said, wearing aviator sunglasses but no mask.

Three hours and 48 minutes later, the president unsteadily descended the small staircase from Air Force One. News organizations were reporting that Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the two top Democrats in Congress, had each privately conveyed that members were deeply concerned about his chances in November.

Biden emerged from Air Force One with a cap and a bomber jacket but no mask, holding himself steady with his right hand. He made it two steps before pausing, pointing and waving straight ahead, mouth agape. He took two more steps and stopped again, this time looking to his right. After three seconds, he turned to the left and raised both his hands when he found reporters gathered near the left engine of the plane.

Ten more steps and Biden made it to the ground. He turned again to reporters shouting questions about the race.

It was becoming clearer every day that the intense push to persuade Democrats to accept his candidacy was failing. Before gingerly getting into his limousine for the ride to his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, the president looked back at the reporters.

“I am doing well,” Biden said as he gave a thumbs-up.

c.2024 The New York Times Company