President Joe Biden can’t seem to get any relief.
The president’s hopes for the Republican National Convention were dashed Wednesday when he learned he had contracted COVID-19, forcing him to cancel an appearance before a prominent Latino advocacy group.
Though Biden’s symptoms are mild, the diagnosis has sidelined him from the campaign trail and put his health back in the spotlight — all at a crucial moment when he is doing his best to prove that concerns about his age and mental acuity are exaggerated.
Earlier on Wednesday, Adam Schiff, a California congressman and the Democratic nominee in that state’s U.S. Senate race, reignited calls among allies that Biden should drop out of the race, urging him to “pass the torch.”
This followed two reports from ABC News and the Washington Post that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had warned Biden in private conversations last week about the risk posed by his continuing candidacy.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement that Biden told leaders he is the party’s nominee and plans to win. Still, the two joined forces in the following days to lobby against a July virtual roll call at the Democratic National Committee that would have sealed Biden’s nomination and effectively ended efforts to replace him at the top of the ticket.
The president further inflamed the drama by suggesting in a BET interview taped on Tuesday that he would consider dropping out of the race if any new health issues emerged. Meanwhile, Senator Bernie Sanders, a supporter of the president, acknowledged in an interview with the New Yorker that Biden has trouble finishing sentences.
Worse, Biden’s struggles came against scenes from the Republican convention, where Republican nominee Donald Trump appeared on stage wearing a bandage over his ear because of the failed assassination attempt last weekend.
Trump’s defiant, fist-pumping response to the shooting immediately stirred up voices of skepticism about his standing within the Republican Party. On Tuesday night, former primary rivals Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis took the stage in Milwaukee to lay out their arguments for supporting Trump’s candidacy.
These events fueled the sense that there were two campaigns moving in opposite directions: one on the rise and the other in turmoil.
Opinion polls show Democrats have reason to be worried.
Nearly two-thirds of Biden’s own party say he should drop out of the race, according to an Associated Press-NORC poll released hours before Biden’s COVID diagnosis. Just three in 10 Democrats are extremely or very confident in his ability to serve effectively as president.
off the rails
Biden had hoped to reverse those perceptions during a three-day trip that quickly derailed.
The president had originally planned to travel to Austin, Texas, on Monday, where he would deliver a speech at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library to mark the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. The White House had viewed the address as an opportunity for Biden to align himself with past Democratic efforts to expand protections for minorities, while portraying Trump as enabling new restrictions on abortion and voting rights.
But that event was canceled after the shooting at Trump’s rally on Saturday and the interview with NBC News was moved to the White House. Without the backdrop of the event, the interview turned into a tense and confrontational exchange that focused mainly on Biden’s rhetoric and questions about his age.
“Come over and talk to me sometime about what we should be talking about,” Biden told NBC anchor Lester Holt at the closing. “Okay? Issues.”
Biden resumed campaign events on Tuesday with an appearance at the NAACP’s national convention, but quickly forgot the main point of his speech: a new proposal to limit rent increases by corporate landlords to 5% per year.
Instead, Biden appeared to have difficulty reading his teleprompter, and eventually said the limit would be $55.
medical condition
Following the incident, BET News released excerpts from an interview with Biden in which he opened up about reconsidering his re-election campaign on the advice of doctors.
“If any medical conditions of mine pop up, if any, if the doctors come to me and say, you have this problem and that problem,” Biden said.
Things didn’t improve on Wednesday. Semaphore reports that Biden spoke with Hollywood executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, who is leading his fundraising efforts, and was told that donations had stopped coming in due to concerns about his age. Katzenberg later released a statement to the outlet, calling it a “misinterpretation of a private meeting.”
The President then went for a radio interview with Univision but left after feeling unwell. He tested positive for COVID-19 and immediately left for Las Vegas airport to return to his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
According to the White House, the only positive news for the president was that his symptoms were mild: a runny nose, cough, and — appropriately — “general malaise.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
