President Joe Biden’s campaign bashed former President Donald Trump after his Republican National Convention speech Thursday while showing notes of defiance toward efforts in the Democratic Party to oust him.
The statement seemed like another rebuttal to doubters who believe Biden will drop out of the presidential race and cede the fight against Trump to someone else.
“The stakes have never been higher,” the statement said. “The choice has never been more clear. President Biden is more determined than ever to defeat Donald Trump and his Project 2025 agenda in November.”
Before the campaign released its final statement, campaign Chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon, who wrote it, released a preliminary statement in which she referred to herself as running for president before fixing to include Biden.
The campaign’s statement comes as efforts to halt Biden from running have reached a fever pitch and rumors swirled that the president could step down from his reelection campaign as soon as this weekend. Some Democratic leaders are leading the effort to replace Biden.
Despite their conviction, Biden’s campaign has denied he will step down. The president recently came down with COVID-19 and needed to halt his time on the campaign trail to go home to Delaware. Vice President Kamala Harris, who has been rumored as the favorite to be his successor as the Democratic nominee, has been campaigning in his place.
Democrats have disagreed on whether to replace Biden or not, with mixed messaging from the party during the turmoil. Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) recently became the second senator to ask Biden to step down on Thursday, while Rep. Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) spoke on a nearly hourlong Instagram Live on the efforts to oust Biden and the drawbacks to doing so.
During the Democratic turmoil, Trump gave a speech at the RNC accepting the GOP nomination that received mixed reviews. Most praised the former president’s strong start but lamented the length of the speech in which Trump sometimes went off-script or rambled.
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Trump is leading Biden 47.7% to 44.7% in RealClearPolitics’s polling average.
