Biden's new danger: The calls are coming from inside the house
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Biden checks his watch during a Fourth of July event at the White House. Photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images
A chorus of damaging new leaks about President Biden suggest that parts of his inner circle have been compromised by the same deep-seated anxieties roiling the Democratic Party.
Why it matters: Pressure on Biden to quit the race has been steadily building on Capitol Hill. On Thursday, hours before Biden's NATO press conference, the calls began coming from inside the house.
Driving the news: A small group of longtime Biden aides and advisers have in recent days discussed how to convince the president that he must drop out of the race, the N.Y. Times reported, citing three people briefed on the matter.
- Spokespeople for the White House and the Biden campaign vehemently denied the reporting.
- Separately, NBC News reported that some of Biden's closest allies, including three people directly involved in his re-election effort, now believe he has no chance of winning.
- "He needs to drop out. He will never recover from this," one campaign official told NBC. "No one involved in the effort thinks he has a path," a second person said.
The intrigue: The Biden campaign is quietly conducting a survey this week assessing Vice President Kamala Harris' polling strength against former President Trump, the N.Y. Times also reported Thursday.
Between the lines: Leaks of this intensity are typically the product of a demoralized staff.
- A new CNN report about how Biden aides have carefully stage-managed his Cabinet meetings — including with pre-screened questions — suggests the frustrations have penetrated the highest levels of the administration.
- An unnamed Cabinet secretary told CNN that they can't be certain of Biden's true condition because they see him so rarely.
The other side: The number of elected Democrats who have explicitly called for Biden to leave the race is still relatively low, though some have indicated that they're waiting for the NATO summit to end.
- Biden's campaign conceded in an internal memo Thursday that the polling "movement" since the debate is "real," but argued that it does not represent "a sea-change in the state of the race."
- "There is also no indication that anyone else would outperform the president vs. Trump," Biden campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon and campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez wrote.
- O'Malley Dillon and two other senior Biden advisers, Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti, made a similar case at a private Senate Democratic lunch Thursday, but faced widespread pushback for their rosy outlook.
