Speaking to a raucous audience in Madison, Wisconsin, on Friday, President Biden said he would not cave to calls for him to step down and vowed not to withdraw from the presidential race.
“Some people don't seem to care who you voted for,” he told the sign-waving crowd, who chanted “Go Joe!” “Well, guess what? They're trying to throw me out of the race. I'll be very clear: I'm staying in the race!”
Biden began his speech strong, speaking quickly and looking flusher than he did during a disastrous debate in which he questioned whether he was too old to remain in the running against former President Donald J. Trump.
In a speech delivered in a small middle school gym, Trump addressed the issues head on, saying he was never too old to create 15 million jobs, appoint the first black woman to the Supreme Court and “beat Big Pharma.”
“I'm in Wisconsin for one reason only: we're going to win,” Biden said, before turning his attack on Trump.
“Donald Trump isn't just a convicted criminal,” Biden told the audience. As with most of his speeches, Biden used a teleprompter. “He's a wave of criminals.”
Biden arrived in Wisconsin betting that a strong performance could be one of his last, best hopes for saving his fragile presidential campaign.
Biden's speech is taking place under intense political scrutiny, and every word he utters during the rally and later in a prime-time interview will be viewed through the lens of two questions hanging over his campaign: At 81, is he too old, and can he still win?
For days, Biden, his allies, White House officials and campaign officials have given the same answer to these questions: He doesn't, and he can.
But after Biden's debate performance last week, many Democrats urged him to prove to voters he is fit for the presidency by relying less on teleprompters, participating in unscripted conversations during the campaign and granting more high-profile interviews with veteran journalists.
Some of the president's major donors have signaled they no longer trust him and are demanding proof he is still competent before providing more money to his campaign.
A group of 168 corporate executives and donors, including former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, shoe-making brothers John and Tom Florsheim and Walmart heiress Christy Walton, issued a letter on Friday calling on him to resign.
Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts was the third person to serve in Congress. The congressman told a Boston radio station on Friday that Biden should not seek reelection, saying he should “follow in the footsteps of one of our Founding Fathers, George Washington, and step aside so new leadership can rise.”
Friday's event will be the first test of whether Biden can meet those demands and silence his critics, proving to skeptical supporters he has the energy to put up a hard fight against Trump with four months left in the campaign.
After the speech, Biden will tape his first television interview since his Atlanta debate debacle raised serious concerns about his mental health. How he answers questions from ABC's George Stephanopoulos could determine whether his reelection bid survives.
It will be his first major interview since the debate, and he is almost certain to face tougher questions than he did in a series of friendly interviews with two black talk-radio hosts that aired Thursday, in which he stammered and made two gaffes. The full interview on ABC airs at 8 p.m. Eastern.
The visit to Madison, the state capital and college city that is overwhelmingly Democratic, comes at a key moment for Biden as he tries to stem a tide of defections from his party.
Many supporters at the rally said they continued to support Biden despite his struggles and criticized the media for focusing on his age.
“This news really makes me angry,” said Tina Stratton, 61, a former groundskeeper from Hortonville, southwest of Green Bay, who was wearing a pro-Biden-Harris T-shirt. “As long as he's determined to do this, I'm going to keep fighting for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.”
But some younger voters said they were worried about Biden's poor debate performance and came to the debate to see what he was really like.
“If he continues to struggle, I think we need to have a serious conversation about dropping out,” said Matthew Sturtz, 19, a college student from Sheboygan, “but I'm hopeful he'll do well.”
Rohan Comur, 20, said many of his friends were “disgusted” by Biden's age.
“He needs to prove to the American people that he is fit to be president,” Comur said.
Wisconsin, which has 10 electoral votes, is part of the president's Midwestern stronghold and a group of Rust Belt states he must win if he wants another four years in the White House. Even before last week's debate, polls had shown Biden in a close race with Trump in the state, which he won by about 20,000 votes out of more than 3.2 million in the 2020 presidential election.
The state is also at the center of a long-running fight over voting procedures that could determine the outcome of another very close election. On Friday, just hours before Air Force One was scheduled to land, liberal justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned an earlier ruling by conservative justices that had banned the use of absentee ballot drop boxes in elections.
That change alone is likely to give Biden an advantage if he remains in the running in November's election. Democrats tend to do well in early voting, a practice Trump has denounced as fraudulent and urged his supporters not to mail in their ballots early.
For now, Biden's future may hinge on how he appeals to Wisconsin voters, whose support has shifted over the past two presidential elections. Friday's arrival marks his fifth visit to the state this year. In January, he visited the Blatnik Bridge in Superior, Wisconsin, to promote an infrastructure bill. In May, he visited Racine, Wisconsin, to promote the construction of an AI data center.
Biden was scheduled to speak again on Sunday at a National Education Association meeting in Philadelphia, but his campaign said Friday the speech had been canceled after union officials declared a strike over working conditions.
A campaign spokesman said in a statement: “President Biden is a strong supporter of unions and will not cross the strike line. The President also plans to visit Pennsylvania this weekend and will announce more details at a later date.”
Biden will travel to Las Vegas during the Republican National Convention later this month and speak at meetings of the NAACP and Unidos US, his campaign said on Friday.
