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Biden allies rally with public show of support

President Joe Biden, left, and first lady Jill Biden arrive on Marine One at East Hampton Airport, Saturday, June 29, 2024, in East Hampton, N.Y. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

WASHINGTON (AP) — While President Joe Biden was out of sight at Camp David Sunday spending time with family, prominent Democrats rallied with a public show of unwavering support for his campaign following his unsteady debate performance and growing anxiety over whether he should remain in the White House race.

“I do not believe that Joe Biden has a problem leading for the next four years,” said one close ally, Democratic Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina. “Joe Biden should continue to run on his record.” Yet the stark illustration of the Democratic angst was seen in words from former Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who served for more than two decades with Biden in the Senate and called the debate “a disaster from which Biden cannot recover.”

Biden’s allies blanketed the Sunday talk shows and conceded that the president’s showing against Republican Donald Trump on Thursday night had ranged from subpar to bad. They encouraged voters to see past the moment, look at Biden’s long-term record and focus on Trump’s myriad falsehoods during the 90-minute debate.

Privately, though, Biden’s campaign has been working to tamp down concerns over the debate on CNN where Biden sounded raspy and at times was unable to finish sentences. The campaign has spent the days since then working to keep donors and surrogates on board.

After a New York fundraising event Saturday, Biden traveled with his family to Camp David, the presidential retreat outside Washington. The previously planned trip was also being used to take family photographs for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.

Even before the debate, the age of the 81-year-old Democratic president has been a liability with voters, and the prime-time faceoff appeared to reinforce the public’s deep-seated concerns before perhaps the largest audience he will garner in the four months until Election Day. CNN said more than 51 million people watched the debate.

Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat and Baptist minister, said there had been “more than a few Sundays when I wish I had preached a better sermon,” relating the experience to Biden’s debate performance.

“But after the sermon was over it was my job to embody the message, to show up for the people that I serve. And that’s what Joe Biden has been doing his entire life,” Warnock said, echoing the message from other supporters that Biden had a bad debate, but a lifetime of good governance.

Warnock, like Clyburn and others, pivoted to Trump’s many falsehoods during the debate — falsehoods Biden and the debate moderators often failed to fact check from the stage — including about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, immigration and the outcome of the 2020 election.

“Whenever his mouth was moving, he was lying,” Warnock said of Trump.

Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., dodged questions about Trump’s false claims and praised Trump’s performance while accusing the national news media of hiding a debilitating condition.

Trump “was strong. He was clear. He was coherent,” Graham said.

He called Biden “compromised” and said “the media is covering” it up.

Behind closed doors, a sense of concern was simmering among some Democrats that Biden’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee were not taking seriously enough the impact of Biden’s performance.

The DNC chairman, Jaime Harrison, and Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, held a Saturday afternoon call with dozens of committee members across the country — a group of some of the most influential members of the party — where they offered rosy assessment of the path forward and no opportunity for others on the call to respond with questions.

Multiple committee members on the call, most granted anonymity to talk about the private discussion, described feeling like they were being asked to ignore a serious predicament.

In the aftermath of that debate, Biden flashed more vigor in speeches in North Carolina and New York on Friday, saying he believes with “all my heart and soul” that he can do the job of the presidency.

The Biden campaign said it has raised more than $27 million on Thursday and Friday, including $3 million at a New York City fundraiser focused on the LGBTQ+ community.

Jill Biden told supporters Friday that he said to her after the debate, “You know, Jill, I don’t know what happened. I didn’t feel that great.” The first lady then said she responded to him, “Look, Joe, we are not going to let 90 minutes define the four years that you’ve been president.”

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