President Biden today espoused a Trumpian dichotomy: Party "elites" want him out — but ordinary voters stand behind him.

• The problem: Polls suggest that's simply not true. If anything, swing voters and many committed Democrats were questioning his fitness long before party bigwigs.

💨 What he's saying: "I'm getting so frustrated by the [party] elites," Biden said in a phone interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

• "If any of these guys don't think I should run, run against me! Announce for president, challenge me at the convention," Biden said.
• Referring to his easy renomination and cheering crowds at a couple of recent events, Biden said: "I wanted to make sure I was right — that the average voter out there still wanted Joe Biden. And I'm confident they do."

📉 Reality check: Polls before and after the debate tell a different story, Axios' April Rubin writes.

• A CBS News poll found 46% of Democrats (up from 36% in February) and 72% of registered voters (up from 63% in February) think Biden shouldn't run for president.
• Concerns about Biden's age spiked after the debate, but they're not new. An ABC poll in February found 86% of Americans thought Biden was too old to serve another four years.

🔎 Between the lines: Party elites actually helped clear the path for Biden's virtually uncontested renomination, prioritizing a united front behind the president over any simmering concerns about his sharpness.

• Only now are donors, pundits and elected officials getting publicly skittish.
• And only now is the walking definition of the Democratic elite — 48 total years in the Senate and White House — starting to rage against them.

Tropical Storm Beryl is slamming the Texas coast, including Galveston and Houston, with damaging winds and flooding, Axios' Andrew Freedman and Jacob Knutson report.

⚡️Threat level: At least 2.7 million customers are without power. The outages may spread inland as the slowly weakening storm moves northward.

• Beryl made landfall early this morning as a Category 1 hurricane, with a northeastward wobble in the storm's path forcing Houston to endure hours of drenching rains and hurricane-force winds.
• The storm produced a "life-threatening" storm surge and heavy rainfall.

The latest: At least two people have been killed in coastal Texas. Water rescues are ongoing in Houston.

• Parts of Houston are getting flash flooding after receiving 5–11 inches of rain. Wind gusts up to 84 mph were recorded at the city's William P. Hobby Airport.

Full coverage.

Above: The running of the bulls this morning in Pamplona, Spain.

1. 🩺 A $1 billion donation from Mike Bloomberg to Johns Hopkins medical school will allow most students to attend tuition-free starting this fall. Read on.
2. 💊 Patients on Mounjaro lost more weight than patients on fellow diabetes drug Ozempic, a study published today in JAMA Internal Medicine found. That could be a boon for Mounjaro manufacturer Eli Lilly, Axios' Maya Goldman writes.
3. 📺 ABC News political director Rick Klein was named the network's new VP and Washington bureau chief. Before joining ABC, Klein was a reporter for The Boston Globe. The announcement.

A summer tradition is underway: Private chefs are heading to the Hamptons — and onto your Instagram or TikTok feed.

• 🍽 The social media phenomenon started in 2022, as chefs captured themselves picking produce and preparing decadent dinners in the homes and gardens of the Hamptons elite.

That attention made stars of a few private chefs and helped bring prestige "to personal cheffing, a field that was long seen as 'the stepchild' of the culinary industry, which reveres restaurant chef work as its pinnacle," the Washington Post's Emily Heil writes.

• 🌸 "The Hamptons' specific aesthetic — with its cedar-shake siding and acres of hydrangeas — makes it particularly alluring."

Eat up.