President Biden's family is urging him to stay and keep fighting in the presidential race despite his disastrous performance in last week's debate, but some family members are privately expressing outrage over how the president's staff has prepared for the debate, people familiar with the matter said Sunday.
Mr. Biden gathered with his wife, children and grandchildren at Camp David to try to gauge Democratic fears. Relatives were keenly aware of how poorly Mr. Biden fared against former President Donald J. Trump but argued he could show Americans he was still capable of four more years in office.
Biden has been consulting with advisers about how to proceed, and staff are debating whether to hold a news conference or give interviews to defend himself and change his stance, but nothing has been decided yet. The campaign has scheduled a potentially crucial call with its national fundraising committee for Monday to try to ease tensions and take stock.
One of the people urging Biden to resist pressure to back down is his son, Hunter Biden, whom the president has long sought advice from, said one of the people familiar with the discussions, who, like the others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Hunter Biden wants Americans to see the combative, fact-grabbing father he knows, not the doddering aging president they saw Thursday night.
Other family members have also been thinking about how they can help, with at least one of the president's grandsons expressing a desire to become more involved in the campaign, including by speaking to social media influencers, according to sources.
Democrats' anger was made clear on Sunday when John Morgan, a major Democratic donor who is close to Biden's brother Frank, publicly criticized the advisers who oversaw the preparations for the presidential debates, naming Ron Klain, Anita Dunn and Bob Bauer.
“For far too long, Biden has been duped by Anita Dunn and her husband's values,” Morgan wrote on social media. “They need to resign today. This fraud is egregious. This is political malfeasance.”
He elaborated further in a later interview: “It's like taking a pro boxer going into a title fight and putting him in a sauna for 15 hours and then telling him, 'Go fight,'” he said. “I think the only people in the debate are Ron Crane, Bob Bauer and Anita Dunn.”
Biden's family is also said to have been keeping an eye on the president's staff, including Dunn, a senior White House adviser, and her husband, Bauer, the president's personal lawyer, who played Trump in debate rehearsals.
Klain, the former White House chief of staff who oversaw debate preparations, questioned why Biden was so crammed with statistics and was upset that Biden, who arrived at the debate in Atlanta with a summer tan, had been made to look pale and sallow, said one of the people who has been in contact with several family members.
But the person said the president himself was not among those shaken and that he still trusted Klain, Dunn, Bauer and others. Other Democrats said it was unfair to blame staff for the president's own failures, dismissing them as typical second-guessing and scapegoating to shift the blame onto Biden himself.
Several Democrats noted that neither the family, Morgan nor other critics attended preparation meetings and therefore had no idea how the debate went. One Biden aide said no one was happy with the outcome and that it was human nature to find someone to blame.
Klain, Dunn and Bauer would not comment on debate preparations, but Klain said he was 100 percent certain the president would continue in the race. “He's the Democratic voter's choice,” Klain said. “He has the highest support ever from grassroots donors. He had a terrible night on debate night. But you win campaigns by fighting through adversity, not by giving up.”
Klain recalled how Biden's momentum couldn't be stopped despite his poor performance in the 2019 primary debates. “It was a tough, close race, but Biden is the one who can win,” Klain said. “Big donors can't decide the Democratic nominee.”
In the days since the debate, Biden has privately and publicly acknowledged that he performed poorly, calling trusted advisers such as Klain, longtime aide and friend Ted Kaufman and historian and informal adviser Jon Meacham, as well as major donors and senior party officials.
But three people familiar with Biden's call said it was more to see what people were saying than to seek advice on rethinking his future. Biden's tone was described as cautious. One person on Biden's phone tree said the president wants to continue campaigning hard to contrast himself with Trump, a convicted felon who tried to overturn the results of the last election and made numerous false statements during the debates.
Campaign advisers spent the weekend on calls with angry big donors, trying to stave off a wave of defections. The campaign has scheduled a conference call with its national fundraising committee for Monday at 5:30 p.m., when it will hear from executives Jen O'Malley Dillon and Rufus Giffords. Many aides said maintaining the donor base will be key to staying in the presidential race.
Biden was due to return to the White House on Monday evening after planning to spend at least part of the long Independence Day weekend with his family on a Delaware beach, but the White House had not announced his schedule for the rest of the week.
While the campaign has strongly rejected advice that Biden would step aside for another candidate just weeks before a roll call vote that will formally decide the nomination, many Democrats, including the president's top aides, said they believe the door is not yet closed.
But Biden is a proud man, and they said they still think his chances of following through are about 4-5. The only way they could imagine Biden reversing course, they said, is if he is given a dignified exit that allows him to claim credit for ousting Trump in 2020, rebuilding the country and transitioning to the next generation.
A new CBS News poll found strong sentiment among Democrats that Biden, 81, should make way for a younger candidate. Forty-five percent of Democrats said they would like to see another candidate take on Trump. Among voters overall, just 27% believe Biden has the mental and cognitive health to serve as president, down from 35% before the debate.
Democratic stalwarts took to talk shows Sunday to defend the president. “If they're not a little bit worried, they're not a Democrat,” Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia said on NBC's “Meet the Press.” But he added that “Joe Biden has shown character and grit, not over 90 minutes, but over the last four years, of who he is.”
Maryland Governor Wes Moore acknowledged that Biden's age is a concern for voters. “81 is an important number,” he told CBS' “Face the Nation.” “But it's also important to look at the historically low unemployment rate. I don't think people should forget that.”
Moore said he would not run if Biden dropped out. “Joe Biden is not going to drop out of this race, and he shouldn't,” he said. “He's been a great partner.”
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi denied rumors that the president was backing out. “I support the Biden-Harris combination,” she told former Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki on MSNBC. “Despite any speculation, I'm not abandoning Joe Biden at this point.”
But the word “now” in that comment did not go unnoticed, and Democrats were still closely watching their actions, worried that their senior elected leaders would privately intervene with the president, even as they publicly voiced their support.
Sen. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, acknowledged the president's fate was unclear. “There are very honest, serious, tough conversations happening at all levels of the party,” he said on MSNBC, adding that the party would remain united “whether the president is the nominee or whether somebody else is the nominee.”
Two Biden aides said that if any major discussions about the president's future are to take place with the family, they likely won't be held at Camp David, where many outside the family could hear about them.
The family had been planning a weekend getaway to Camp David even before the debate, partly to take part in a photoshoot with veteran celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz. It would have been the first time the entire family had gathered together since Hunter Biden was convicted of federal firearms charges and still faces a separate trial on sentencing and tax matters.
A senior administration official who was not authorized to discuss details of the internal conversations said discussions were ongoing about how the president should proceed — not about stepping down, but how to best make the case that he shouldn't.
At rallies and fundraisers since Atlanta, Biden has come across as closer to the person his aides portray him: energetic, passionate and determined to keep fighting until November.
But some aides are not pleased with Mr. Biden's reliance on teleprompters at fundraisers, an approach pushed by advisers who want the president to take a more disciplined approach privately. One aide said Mr. Biden has shied away from a more informal approach in recent months because he is “afraid.”