Highlights from Biden’s high-stakes news conference

Biden faced a test Thursday that he had avoided so far this year — a solo news conference with questions from the White House press corps.

The news conference was meant to reassure a disheartened group of Democratic lawmakers, allies and persuadable voters in this year’s election that Biden still has the strength and stamina to be president.

He made at least two notable flubs, referring at an event beforehand to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “President Putin” and then calling Kamala Harris “Vice President Trump” when asked about her by a reporter. But he also gave detailed responses about his work to preserve NATO and his plans for a second term. And he insisted he’s not leaving the race even as a growing number of Democratic lawmakers ask him to step aside.

Here are some highlights from the press conference.

Another House Democrat, freshman Rep. Eric Sorensen of Illinois, said following the press conference that he was “hopeful” the president would step aside.

Sorensen said in 2020, Biden ran with the purpose of “putting country over party. Today, I am asking him to do that again.”

Other representatives from across the country earlier Thursday called on the president to end his reelection campaign. In total, over a dozen House Democrats have said they hope Biden will step aside.

Rep. Scott Peters of California also called on the president to abandon his bid for reelection.

Peters said in a statement after Biden’s news conference that Democrats are on a “losing course.”

“My conscience requires me to speak up and put loyalty to the country and to democracy ahead of my great affection for, and loyalty to, the President and those around him,” he said.

Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, says he hopes Biden will step away from his presidential campaign.

Himes said in a post on the social media platform X immediately after Biden’s news conference that it has been “the honor of my career” to work with Biden, but that “the 2024 campaign will define the future of American democracy, and we must put forth the strongest candidate possible to confront the threat posed by Trump’s promised MAGA authoritarianism.”

Himes said he no longer believes that person is Joe Biden, “and I hope that, as he has throughout a lifetime of public service, he will continue to put our nation first, and as he promised, make way for a new generation of leaders.”

More than a dozen House Democrats have now called for Biden to leave the campaign. Vermont Sen. Peter Welch is the only Democratic senator to say he should step aside.

Biden has wrapped up a nearly hourlong news conference in which he batted away questions about his age and fitness for office, while defending his record.

The president opened with an eight-minute statement, largely about the NATO summit he hosted in Washington, before taking reporters’ questions.

Biden called on reporters from 10 news organizations. He was asked about Democrats calling on him to drop his reelection bid, Vice President Kamala Harris and foreign policy.

Biden insists he has no plans to leave the presidential race to make room for the vice president or anyone else.

Asked if he would consider bowing out before November if he’s shown data that Harris could perform better against Trump, Biden responded, “No, unless they came back and said, ‘There’s no way you can win.’”

“No one’s saying that,” Biden said. “No poll says that.”

He conceded that there were probably other candidates “who can beat Trump” but pointed to his campaign’s strong fundraising and operations in battleground states. He noted that anyone other than him would have “to start from scratch.”

None of the nine Democratic governors present at the National Governors Association conference remained around a TV watching as Biden’s news conference entered its final stretch.

Only a handful of Democratic staffers remained near the TV as the event wound down. The rest left to mingle in the hotel courtyard in Salt Lake City.

Pressed about if he would undergo cognitive testing, Biden again said that his job as president was proof of his mental acuity.

The president said he’d taken three “significant and intense neurological exams” conducted by a neurologist, with the most recent in February. He also said he’s “tested every single day” as he tackles the challenges of the White House.

Biden said that if his doctors say they “think I should have a neurological exam again, I’ll do it,” but he added: “No one’s suggesting that to me now.”

Biden is reiterating his determination to run for reelection, despite the growing number of Democratic lawmakers and others who are calling for him to step aside.

“I think it’s important that I allay fears,” he said, referring to campaign appearances on Friday in Detroit and next week in Texas and Nevada.

“I gotta finish this job,” he said. “I gotta finish this job, because there’s so much at stake.”

Some Democratic governors are watching the president’s press conference in a private viewing during the National Governors Association.

A couple of groans could be heard as Hawaii Gov. Josh Green stepped outside during the news conference. It wasn’t immediately clear what they were responding to.

Green told The Associated Press he supports the president’s choice to run.

“My admiration and love for the president is not going to wane no matter how many ‘moments’ he has,” Green said. The governor said the state loves him because of what he did to help after the Maui fire.

Biden’s press conference has shifted largely from questions about if he’s up to continuing his reelection campaign to foreign policy.

“There isn’t any world leader I’m not prepared to deal with,” the president said.

He also vowed to maintain a hardline against Russian President Vladimir Putin: “If we allow Russia to succeed in Ukraine, they’re not stopping in Ukraine.”

Biden gave remarks ahead of the news conference, but teleprompter screens were retracted ahead of reporters’ questions.

Journalists at Biden’s news conference charged from the gate with questions about his health, showing no hesitation at tackling the issue head-on.

The first five questioners all asked something about his health — some by itself, some embedded in questions about other things.

Finally, 15 minutes in, a reporter — a non-American — asked about European concerns if Donald Trump were to resume the presidency.

For his part, Biden answered some of the health questions emphatically but, on others, shifted the answers to focusing on the economy, the success of the NATO conference and other non-health-related topics.

Biden said the best way to reassure anyone who is concerned about him having another “bad night” is “the way I assure myself and that is: ‘Am I getting the job done?’”

The president said “there’s no indication yet” that he’s slowing down on that front.

Biden had explained his poor debate performance against Trump last month by saying he had a “bad night.”

Trump is weighing in live on Biden’s news conference.

The presumptive GOP presidential nominee posted on his social media network a video clip of when Biden said “Vice President Trump.”

Trump added sarcastically at the end: “Great job, Joe!”

Biden is denying that he previously said he needs to cut back on his schedule to get to bed by 8 p.m.

The president told reporters that, in previous conversations, what he meant was “it’d be smarter to pace myself a little bit.”

He suggested that working from early in the morning until near midnight was probably not a great idea and suggested that evening fundraisers for his reelection campaign could begin an hour or two earlier going forward.

Biden also vowed that, ahead of his second debate with Trump in September, “I’m not going to be traveling 15 time zones.”

“Pace myself. Pace myself,” he said.

Asked whether the focus on his flubs and the pressure to drop out of the race has become damaging for the United States, Biden pushed back on the question.

“Have you seen a more successful conference?” he asked. “What do you think?”

Biden did not address the question, but he asserted that the just-concluded NATO summit was “the most successful conference I attended in a long time.”

Biden was asked how it might hurt his place in the history books if he were to keep running and lose to Trump in November — but insisted he’s not concerned.

Instead, his focus, he said, is continuing four more years of policies to grow the economy and help the middle class.

“I’m not in this for my legacy,” Biden said. “I’m in this to complete the job I started.”

The first question of Biden’s press conference was about him losing support among many of his fellow Democrats and key unions, and about Vice President Kamala Harris possibly replacing him on the ticket.

Biden was at first defiant, saying the “UAW endorsed me, but go ahead,” meaning the United Autoworkers.

But then he flubbed the answer, mixing up Harris and Trump: “I wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president if she wasn’t qualified.”

After opening the news conference by talking about NATO and security for Ukraine, Biden shifted to discussing inflation and border security in the U.S., and negotiations for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.

He’s now taking reporters’ questions.

Biden is opening a highly anticipated news conference with a statement on the just-concluded 75th anniversary NATO summit he hosted in Washington.

He’ll start taking reporters’ questions after that.

New British Prime Minister Keir Starmer declined to directly answer repeated questions about Biden’s brief verbal flub referring to Zelenskyy as “President Putin.”

Instead Starmer praised Biden for his leadership and his preparation in putting the event together and securing solid outcomes for Ukraine.

“I want to look at the substance of what’s been achieved over these two days,” said Starmer, who is making his debut on the international stage.

He noted he had spent several hours with the president in a private meeting and a dinner but would not offer an opinion on Biden’s capabilities.

“We’ve reached a declaration, which has been signed off (on),” he said. “It was good but also one that President Biden deserves credit for.”

When asked about Biden referring to Zelenskyy as Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron said he would not comment on American politics, but that anyone could could have a slip of the tongue.

“We can all have a slip of the tongue. It’s happened to me,” Macron told reporters, speaking through an interpreter.

Macron said he had a long conversation with Biden during Wednesday’s dinner and heard his discussions in summit meetings. He described Biden as “very much on top of things.”

“He knows the issues and around the table he is amongst those who has the greatest depth of knowledge on these international issues,” said Macron.

As Biden prepares for his high-stakes news conference in Washington, the National Governors Association is meeting for its conference in Salt Lake City.

The nine Democratic governors present for the event filed into a private room to watch a livestream with their staffs and other Democratic officials.

Reporters were not invited in.

Polls conducted after the debate have largely reinforced that Democrats nationwide have doubts about Biden’s ability to lead the ticket in November.

More than half of Democrats, 56%, in a recent Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll said that given Biden’s debate performance, he should step aside and let someone else run. A similar share — more than half — of Democratic voters in a CNN/SSRS poll said the party has a better chance of winning the presidency in November with a different candidate.

Separate from the question of whether he can win, a small but noteworthy chunk of Democrats see a second Biden term as a risky proposition. Around 6 in 10 voters, including about one-quarter of Democrats, said that reelecting Biden as president this November would be a risky choice for the country rather than a safe one, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll.

The timing of the news conference President Joe Biden is set to hold Thursday has been changed to no earlier than 7 p.m. ET, and could be held later due to events at the NATO summit.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg gave the United States — and Donald Trump in particular — some of the credit Thursday for a record number of NATO countries hitting their agreed-to goals for military spending.

But while Trump has been the most prominent critic of fellow NATO allies that don’t meet those goals, it was Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine that really spurred defense spending in Europe. NATO expects 23 of the 32 countries to spend at least 2% of their gross domestic product on defense this year.

That number was just six countries in 2021, before Russia’s invasion.

“The clear message from the United States has had an impact. European allies are really stepping up,” Stoltenberg said.

American leaders, including Biden, have long had the same complaint. Trump has hit the point harder and more often.

Donald Trump’s lawyers urged the judge in his New York hush money case to overturn his conviction and dismiss the case in the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity on Thursday.

Trump was originally scheduled to be sentenced Thursday, but that’s on hold until the trial judge, Juan M. Merchan, rules on whether to set aside Trump’s felony conviction for falsifying records to cover up a potential sex scandal.

President Joe Biden was winding down his remarks at an event on the sidelines of the NATO summit with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other leaders on Thursday when he made an untimely verbal flub: He referred to the Ukrainian leader as “President Putin.”

“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,” Biden said.

The room, and Zelenskyy, gasped at Biden’s gaffe, which the U.S. president quickly sought to clean up.

“President Putin? You’re going to beat President Putin,” Biden said to Zelenskyy at the event to mark the unveiling of an agreement called the Ukraine Compact. “I’m so focused on beating Putin; we got to worry about it,” Biden explained.

Zelenskyy joked: “I’m better” than Putin.

Biden agreed. “You’re a hell of a lot better.”

The number of Democratic members of Congress calling for Biden to drop out of the presidential race is continuing to grow, with U.S. Rep. Ed Case of Hawaii adding his name to the list.

Case said in a statement late Thursday afternoon that it’s unclear whether Biden can perform “the most difficult job in the world” for another four years.

Case acknowledged that replacing him would be “difficult and uncertain” but he did not believe continuing with Biden would be the “best path forward for our country.”

More than a dozen House Democrats have publicly called for Biden to step aside.

A former mayor of Phoenix, Stanton represents a Democratic-leaning suburban Arizona district that includes many of the state’s most competitive precincts, where ticket-splitting voters helped fuel Democratic gains in the emerging swing state while backing moderate Republicans who have distinguished themselves from Trump.

Rep. Greg Stanton of Arizona became the latest member of Congress to call on Biden to step out of the presidential race, a list that now numbers over a dozen.

Stanton said he was one of Biden’s earliest supporters in 2020 but that it is now time for the president to “pass the torch” to new leaders.

He said in a statement that Trump poses an “existential threat to the Constitution and the rule of law,” and the Democrats need a candidate who can effectively make the case against him.

Stanton is the second representative from the swing state of Arizona to ask Biden to step down from the top of the ticket.

The former president’s son will speak before his father’s vice presidential pick next Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention.

The scheduling, first reported by Axios, was confirmed by a person close to Trump Jr. who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official speaking schedule has yet to be released.

But the timing is sure to increase speculation about the chances of JD Vance, the Ohio senator, who is one of Trump’s top contenders for the role. Donald Trump Jr. is close friends with the senator and has been a staunch proponent of his candidacy.

The person close to Trump Jr. cautioned, however, that the former president’s son had been slotted to speak at that time weeks ago.

Donald Trump has been playing coy about his VP decision and has gone back and forth in interviews when asked whether he has settled on a pick.

The network said it agreed to the Biden campaign’s request to make two edits to its interview with the president ahead of broadcast.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported Thursday that Civic Media said its decision to make the tweaks fell short of “journalistic interview standards.”

Civic Media’s Earl Ingram was one of two Black radio hosts who said last week that he had been given questions by the Biden campaign ahead of speaking with the president. Ingram told The Associated Press that there was “no back and forth” over the four questions he was provided.

The Biden campaign did not immediately return a message seeking comment. The campaign said it plans to refrain from offering suggested questions to hosts, according to a person familiar with the candidate’s interview booking process but not permitted to speak publicly about its operations.

Per the station, the campaign asked to remove a portion where Biden referenced having “more Blacks in my administration than any other president” and a reference to the Central Park Five case, the group of teenagers wrongly convicted of raping a white jogger in a brutal attack more than three decades ago.

Vice President Kamala Harris is vowing that President Biden will win in November while acknowledging that recent days haven’t been easy.

“The last few days have been a reminder that running for president is never easy — nor should it be,” Harris said at a campaign event at James B. Dudley High School in Greensboro, North Carolina.

She made no reference to a growing number of Democrats who have urged Biden to leave the presidential race. If he were to do so, Harris might wind up at the top of the Democratic ticket.

Instead, the vice president said of Biden, “One thing we know about our president is that he’s a fighter.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskky says that in order to win the war with Russia, the U.S. must lift limits on using its weapons to strike military targets in Russia.

Zelenskyy made the comments Thursday while appearing alongside NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in the final days of a NATO summit.

Earlier in the day, Biden reaffirmed his support for Ukraine, announcing a new military aid package and pledging to Zelenskyy: “We will stay with you, period.”

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear says he backs Biden as long as he’s the Democratic nominee, but he needs to reassure the voters.

Beshear has been mentioned by skeptics like George Clooney as a possible replacement if Biden were to drop out.

Beshear says he hasn’t talked with anyone in the White House about joining a presidential ticket. The governor has previously pledged to serve out a second term, but didn’t rule out a run.

“President Biden is the current nominee. Only he could make a decision not to be the nominee. I support him as long as he is our nominee,” Beshear said. The president needs to keep up an “aggressive campaign schedule” and reveal details about his health.

The Democrat from Illinois is the latest member of the House Democratic caucus to ask for President Biden to step down as the nominee for president. Schneider, who has defended the president’s record in recent days, says in a statement that he was proud to support Biden’s campaign in 2020 but that now is the time for him to “secure his legacy and boldly deliver the nation to a new generation of leadership.”

“In passing the torch now, President Biden has a chance to live up to this standard and seal his place in history as one of the greatest leaders our nation, and history, has ever known,” the statement continued. “I fear if he fails to make the right choice, our democracy will hang in the balance.”

A new survey from the Pew Research Center underscores how concerned Americans have become about Biden’s mental acuity over the past few years. The poll also found that they are more likely to view Trump as mean-spirited and less likely to view him as honest, compared to Biden.

Only about a quarter of voters say the phrase “mentally sharp” describes Biden very or fairly well. That share has declined 6 percentage points since January and is much lower than it was four years ago, when about half of voters saw Biden as “mentally sharp.”

It’s Biden’s own supporters who are largely driving the decline. About 8 in 10 Biden supporters described Biden as “mentally sharp” in 2020, while only about half do now.

Voters have more confidence in Trump’s mental keenness. The poll found that nearly 6 in 10 voters say the phrase “mentally sharp” describes Trump well, a slight increase from 2020.

Compared to Trump, Biden is more likely to be seen by voters as someone who “cares about the needs of ordinary people” and as “honest.” And they’re considerably more likely to see Trump as “mean-spirited”: Nearly two-thirds of voters say this describes Trump well, while only around 3 in 10 say the same of Biden.

Biden’s high-stakes press appearance scheduled for Thursday night is his first formal solo news conference since November 2023.

The president’s last similar outing came nearly eight months ago when he took questions from reporters after his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in California.

At that news conference, Biden called on reporters from four organizations, one of whom asked two questions.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre jumped in to end the news conference after the fourth reporter, though Biden proceeded to answer an additional nine questions.

Biden’s most recent joint news conference was during the G7 summit last month.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries says colleagues are having “candid, comprehensive and clear-eyed” conversations about President Biden’s candidacy and the 2024 election.

Jeffries has declined publicly to wade too deeply into the debate his party is having over Biden’s reelection, but the New Yorker has said repeatedly he supports Biden and the Democratic ticket.

While Biden has expressed confidence in his chances, his campaign on Thursday acknowledged they are behind, and a growing number of the president’s aides in the White House and the campaign privately harbor doubts that the president can turn it around.

But they’re taking their cues from Biden, expressing that he is in the race 100% — unless and until he isn’t, and there appeared to be no organized internal effort to convince the president to step aside. His allies were well aware heading into the week there would be more calls for him to step down, and they were prepared for it. It really is not clear how many lawmakers (or movie stars) it would take for Biden to reconsider his decision or if that number even exists.

With Trump potentially sharing the bitcoin stage with Snowden, it’s worth noting that in the years before becoming president, he said Snowden deserved to be executed before later changing his tune amid his lingering resentment of the intelligence community.

Biden has held fewer news conferences and has given fewer interviews than his recent predecessors, according to research by a Towson University presidential scholar. To date, Biden has held 37 news conferences, compared to 25 for Ronald Reagan at the same point in their presidencies.

Biden prefers short, informal exchanges with reporters, according to the data from Towson emeritus political science professor Martha Kumar.

Torres said the “narrative” that Biden just had one bad debate performance “reflects a continuing pattern of denial and self-delusion.”

Torres posted on X Thursday that if Biden becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, “we will have no choice but to make the best of a complicated situation. But there is no point in denying the complication.”