Joe Biden laughs off sleep concerns during press conference - and claims Jill 'gives him hell' for working too much
- READ MORE: Complete coverage of Biden's presser
President Joe Biden laughed off claims he needs to get more sleep and said his wife Jill 'gives him hell' for working too much but, in the most important press conference of his career, he vowed he won't leave the presidential race.
The president took questions for almost an hour on Thursday night as he tried to put to rest Democratic fears he can't beat Donald Trump in November and doesn't have the mental capabilities to do the job.
There were a few notable mistakes and, at times, Biden sounded hoarse and mumbled but he made it clear he's in the race to stay.
It's unclear if he's calmed the storm of worry in his party, where at least a dozen Democrats have publicly called on him to exit. There were good moments and bad.
President Joe Biden held a nearly hour-long presser on Thursday night
He started off on a bad foot when he made a significant mistake: calling his Vice President Kamala Harris 'Vice President Trump.'
But, despite the gaffes, he is clearly digging in.
Biden tried to poke fun at what he called a 'stupid mistake' in the first presidential debate and noted at the next debate he won't be traveling through '15 time zones' before hand.
Two weeks before the debate, he had done back-to-back trips to France, Italy and California.
He even took a shot at his staff for packing his schedule, saying they were getting him in trouble with the first lady.
'I love my staff but they add things. They add things all the time. I’m catching hell from my wife,’ Biden said.
And he pushed back on a report that he told Democratic governors following his debate disaster he would pare back events after 8 pm.
‘That’s not true,’ he said, laughing. ‘Look, what I said was instead of my every day starting at 7 o’clock and going to go to bed at midnight, it’d be smarter for me to pace myself a little bit more,’ Biden said.
He said it would be better, for example, to push forward a fundraiser by an hour. ‘Start at 8 – people get to go home by 10,’ Biden said.
There have been reports Jill Biden is one of the few people that could convince Joe Biden to exit the contest.
But Biden said Thursday night the only way he'll leave is if his staff 'came to me and said there's no way you can win.'
And some of his closest aides are doing just that.
They are weighing how to tell him he can't beat Donald Trump in November and needs to drop out of the race.
Other aides agree his chances at winning are zero and the odds are growing stronger he will take Democratic candidates down along with him.
'He needs to drop out,' a Biden campaign official told NBC News. 'He will never recover from this.'
To convince him of that, aides told The New York Times they have to make the case to Biden directly that he can't beat Trump and persuade him another candidate, like Vice President Kamala Harris, can.
They also have to reassure him that, if he were to step aside, the process to choose another candidate would be orderly and not devolve into chaos.
The White House rejected claims in the report. 'Unequivocally, this is not true,' White House spokesman Andrew Bates said.
Other top aides are standing by the president.
'I do not have concerns. He said he had a bad night,' National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Thursday when asked about the president's debate performance.
His White House aides have not approached him yet about an exit plan but are taking steps to make sure they have all the information they will need in place.
The campaign is quietly testing a head-to-head matchup between Harris and Trump, the Times reported.
The campaign is conducting a survey to see how the results play out. The data could either allow them to present a case to Biden that Harris is a strong contender or to reaffirm his view that he is.
Biden, it's said, remains unconvinced that a Democratic besides himself can beat Trump.
Jill Biden is said to be one of the few people that could get Biden to exit the race
At the end of his press conference, Biden took a question on whether his delegates at the convention are ‘free to vote their conscience’ if they have second thoughts about them, after acknowledging he needed to keep proving himself.
‘Obviously they’re free to do whatever they want. But I get overwhelming support’ in the primaries, he said.
‘If tomorrow if all of a sudden they show up at the convention, everybody says, “we want somebody else.” That’s the democratic process.’
Then he dropped his voice to a whisper for emphasis. ‘It’s not going to happen.’
