President Biden's campaign will begin airing new 60-second TV ads in key battleground states on Monday as the presumptive Democratic nominee tries to bounce back from an awkward performance at last week's debate in Atlanta that undermined his own standing. In the 2024 race.
The ad, provided to The New York Times ahead of its first airing, does not include footage of Biden losing his voice and halting his speech before an audience of more than 50 million people during Thursday's debate.
Instead, the ad features a narration by Biden, taken entirely from a rally his campaign held the following day in North Carolina, where, wearing the top two buttons of his shirt undone underneath his suit jacket, he delivered the kind of energetic performance his allies had come to expect the night before.
Accompanied by dramatic music, the ad begins with an attack on former President Donald J. Trump before seguing into a segment of the 81-year-old Biden acknowledging his own limitations.
“Followers, I know I'm not young,” Biden said, “but I know how to do this job. I know right from wrong. I know how to tell the truth. And as millions of Americans know, I know how to get knocked down and get back up.”
He emphasized the last line with a vigorously raised fist.
The ad came after one of the most intense 72 hours of Biden's campaign, with upset donors debating what they could do after Biden's debate performance and the White House and Biden campaign rushing to back the president.
Biden spent Sunday at Camp David with some of his closest relatives, who encouraged him to keep fighting, which is pretty much the entire theme of the new ad.
“The American people deserve a president who won't run away from a fight, and that's Joe Biden,” Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler said in a statement.
The first half of the ad discusses Biden's comments during the debate about the economy, the pandemic and Trump's role in the January 6 riot at the Capitol.
“Did you see Trump last night?” Biden says at the beginning of the ad.
Biden struggled to deliver unscripted speech during the debates — he used a teleprompter at a rally in North Carolina, and the ad quotes were taken from that rally.
The campaign said the ads will air across television and digital platforms in battleground states, targeting younger, more diverse audiences on networks including ESPN, TNT, Bravo, FX and Comedy Central, as well as on larger-audience sports programming and through the season premiere of “The Bachelorette.”
The Biden campaign has been actively trying to quell calls for him to resign following his poor debate performance, with campaign chair Jennifer O'Malley Dillon writing a memo Saturday night denying “all concerns.”
“This election is going to be very close,” she wrote. “It was bound to be that way.”