President Joe Biden mixed up the name of his vice president, Kamala Harris, and his Republican rival, Donald Trump, on Thursday at a news conference where the 81-year-old aims to quell concerns that he is too old to run for reelection.
"Look, I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president if she was not qualified to be president. So start there," Biden said in an inauspicious beginning to the high-profile presser as he responded to a question from Reuters about his confidence in Harris.
The flub quickly drew a cutting response from Trump via his social media platform, Truth Social, where the former president posted video of the "big boy press conference," Biden's first since November.
Wrote Trump: "Crooked Joe begins his 'Big Boy' Press Conference with, 'I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president, though I think she was not qualified to be president.' Great job, Joe!"
That came just a few hours after Biden mistakenly referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy 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 at the NATO summit in Washington, drawing gasps from those in the room.
"Going to beat President Putin, President Zelenskyy. I am so focused on beating Putin," Biden said while correcting himself.
Biden faces growing doubts from donors, supporters and fellow Democrats, who fear that at age 81, his fitness for office has declined. They also fear he no longer has the ability to beat Republican Donald Trump in the November election, or to lead the country for another four-year term.
Biden's campaign has been on the ropes for two weeks, since his poor debate performance against Donald Trump, his 78-year-old Republican rival.
So far, 13 of the 213 Democrats in the House and one of the Senate's 51 Democrats have appealed publicly to the president to withdraw from the race. More could make their concerns public if he fares poorly in his press conference.
United Auto Workers union officials met on Thursday to discuss their concerns with his candidacy, three sources familiar with the matter said, after endorsing Biden in January. The 400,000-member union has a big presence in industrial states like Michigan that Biden will need to carry to win re-election.
Biden advisers met with Senate Democrats to try to quell further defections. His campaign argued that the debate has not dramatically shifted the race, even as it laid out a narrow path to re-election that acknowledged that it faced an uphill climb in many states he won in 2020.
That did not stop four more Democrats in the House of Representatives called on Biden to end his campaign: Brad Schneider of Illinois, Greg Stanton of Arizona, Ed Case of Hawaii, and Hillary Scholten of Michigan.
"For our country's sake, it is time for the President to pass the torch to a new generation of leaders," Stanton said in a prepared statement.
'I DOUBT THE PRESIDENT'S JUDGMENT'
Others stopped short of calling for Biden to drop out, even as 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," Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez said in a statement.
None of the party's leaders in Congress have called for Biden to end his candidacy, though former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday declined to say he should stay in the race.
The campaign has commissioned a survey to test how Vice President Kamala Harris would fare if she were to replace Biden at the top of the ticket, according to a source with knowledge of the matter. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week found Harris would fare no better than Biden if she were the Democratic nominee, as both were statistically tied with Trump.
Prominent donors like actor George Clooney have called on Biden to drop out, and there were signs that concerns are growing within Biden's campaign operation as well.
The New York Times reported that some longtime advisers were considering ways to convince him to drop his reelection bid, while NBC News reported that some campaign staffers thought he stood no chance of winning the election.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week found Biden and Trump tied at 40% each. Other opinion polls have found Trump widening his lead over Biden, and some strategists have warned that Trump stood a chance of winning reliably Democratic states like New Hampshire and Minnesota.
In their strategy memo, the campaign argued that it has always expected a close election and could win by focusing on three battleground states: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
If he won those states, along with others considered to be reliably Democratic, he would win 270 electoral votes – the bare minimum needed to secure the presidency. Biden won 306 electoral votes in 2020.
The campaign characterized other battleground states he won in 2020 as "not out of reach."
Newsmax contributed to this story.
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