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U.S. President Joe Biden holds a press conference during NATO's 75th anniversary summit, in Washington, U.S., July 11, 2024.
Joe Biden’s “big boy” press conference at the end of Thursday’s NATO summit was a high-stakes mixed bag.
The president, facing growing calls to drop his reelection bid over concerns about his age and poor polling, made a few social media-friendly gaffes (he called Kamala Harris his “Vice President Trump” after earlier introducing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “Putin”) but otherwise gave reasonably coherent answers to a range of domestic and foreign policy questions.
Crucially, he insisted repeatedly he would stay in the race, beat Donald Trump, and “finish the job” — but also left open a very thin sliver of possibility that he could step down if his staff showed him that winning was impossible. But “no poll shows that,” he said, contradicting several recent studies.
In all, the performance may dispel some of the gravest concerns about his neurological condition but will likely do little to assuage broader doubts about whether Biden can in fact defeat Trump in November or serve as president until 2028.
Expect further prominent Democrats to call for Biden to step down in the coming days. But the earliest moment at which he would signal any change in his thinking would probably be next week, when an announcement would perfectly upstage Trump’s coronation at the Republican National Convention.