What Happened in Biden’s High-Stakes ABC Interview?

NBC News political correspondent Sahil Kapur’s three takeaways from the big interview were Biden’s denial, defiance, and dismissiveness:

It’s far from clear Biden succeeded at righting the ship. While he displayed more coherence than at the debate, his interview was marked by a mix of denial (of surveys showing that he’s losing the race), defiance (in the face of calls to get out of the race) and dismissiveness (of critics who worry there’s a deeper problem).

The New York Times’ Zolan Kanno-Youngs adds:

Biden was not just dismissive of concerns about his age and campaign — he questioned the fact that people are concerned. He said he did not believe polls, even though most have shown him with low approval ratings. He questioned whether his own supporters were worried whether he can lead for four more years, even though polling has shown the president’s age is a top concern for voters.

Kapur also notes the difficulties Biden had communicating, which were nowhere near as pronounced as during the debate, but noticeable nonetheless:

Sometimes Biden spoke slowly, sometimes he paused while he searched for his words. Sometimes he trailed off into telling stories — a common Biden trait — but unlike during the debate, he caught himself and brought the conversation back with an “anyway…” He also mixed up dates and didn’t always keep numbers straight — like giving different numbers when discussing how many times Trump lied during the debate.

At Vox, Eric Levitz writes that Biden’s interview was less horrifying, but still horrible:

Far from easing anxieties about his candidacy, the president’s sit-down with [Stephanopoulos] should further alarm Democratic leaders. Biden’s remarks indicated that his party may be heading toward a worst-case scenario, one in which the president is largely incompetent as a campaigner but not so consistently and flagrantly inept that his incapacity to win reelection becomes undeniable, even to himself.

Had Biden seemed every bit as ill and confused as he did at last week’s debate, it would be easier to persuade him to drop out — or at least, for Democrats to unify behind a concerted push for his exit. If the president had somehow appeared to grow a decade younger over the past eight days, then he could conceivably have rescued his campaign. Instead, he did better, but still awful.  Which means that salvaging the Democratic Party’s chances will require a wise and courageous show of defiance from its congressional leadership. It is not clear that one is in the offing.

At least some anonymous Democrats in Congress weren’t impressed:

They might not stay anonymous for long:

Representative James Clyburn, who is one of Biden’s most important allies and had stressed the importance of the president quickly demonstrating his fitness for office this week, reiterated his support following the interview: “Joe Biden is who our country needs and his presidency has laid a foundation upon which we can continue our pursuit of a more perfect union.”

But former Obama adviser David Axelrod, who told the New York Times after the interview that “I don’t think this will settle concerns,” also suggested in an X post that Biden is “dangerously out of touch”:

Another sum-total take:

And what is likely an accurate prediction:

According to multiple reporters:

And his campaign is fundraising off it:

This section of the interview focused on the widely reported concerns about Biden’s capacity to be a winning candidate, and his current standing in the race — and the president’s answer is unlikely to assuage those concerns. From the transcript (video of the exchange here):

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: If you are told reliably from your allies, from your friends and supporters in the Democratic Party in the House and the Senate that they’re concerned you’re gonna lose the House and the Senate if you stay in, what will you do?

PRESIDENT BIDEN: I’m not gonna answer that question. It’s not gonna happen.

STEPHANOPOULOS: What’s your plan to turn the campaign around?

BIDEN: You saw it today. How many– how many people draw crowds like I did today? Find me more enthusiastic than today? Huh?

STEPHANOPOULOS: I mean, have– I don’t think you wanna play the crowd game. Donald Trump can draw big crowds. There’s no question about that.

BIDEN: He can draw a big crowd, but what does he say? Who– who does he have? I’m the guy supposedly in trouble. We raised $38 million within four days after this. We have over a million individual contributors, individual contributors. That– that’s less than 200 bucks. We have– I mean, I’ve not seen what you’re proposing.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You haven’t seen the fall-off in the polls? You haven’t seen the reports of discontent in the Democratic Party, House Democrats, Senate Democrats?

BIDEN: I’ve seen it from the press.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, I’ve heard from dozens of your supporters over the last few days, and a variety of views, I grant you that. But the prevailing sentiment is this. They love you, and they will be forever grateful to you for defeating Donald Trump in 2020. They think you’ve done a great job as President, a lot of the successes you outlined. But they are worried about you and the country. And they don’t think you can win. They want you to go with grace, and they will cheer you if you do. What do you say to that?

BIDEN: I say the vast majority are not where that– those folks are. I don’t doubt there are some folks there. Have you ever seen a group– a time when elected officials running for office aren’t little worried? Have you ever seen that? I’ve not. Same thing happened in 2020. “Oh, Biden, I don’t know. Man, what’s he gonna do? He may bring me down, he may…”

STEPHANOPOULOS: Mr. President, I’ve never seen a President with 36 percent approval get reelected.

BIDEN: Well, I don’t believe that’s my approval rating. That’s not what our polls show.

Biden seemed to suggest he’d be okay with that “as long as as I gave it my all and did [as good a job as] I know I can do, that’s what this is about.” But it was a sort of muddled answer:

After the interview aired, the New York Times Maggie Haberman pointed out that, “The note that Biden kept striking — that this was about him and his legacy — is not sitting well with some Democrats who are worried about keeping control of legislative seats.” Other critics have pointed out that the comments seem counter to Biden’s oft-made argument that the point of the campaign is to protect America’s democracy from Trump.

Seems like that was clearly his strategy for how to respond to such concerns. And asked what his time has president has cost him “physically, mentally, emotionally,” Biden answered, “Well, I just think it cost me a really bad night, bad run.”

Despite Biden’s worsening poll numbers, he told Stephanopoulos he thought the race was still a “toss-up” and cited his team’s internal polling:

The president set a pretty high bar for who he’d listen to when asked if there was any condition under which he’d step aside:

Biden says yes to both, suggesting he’s already been a successful president and will continue to be:

The president was also asked if he has had a cognitive or neurological test recently, and responded that, “No. No one said I had to. No one said. They said I’m good.”

Asked if he would submit to “an independent medical evaluation” that included that kind of testing, and then make the results public, Biden dodged the question by way of saying his job was a de-facto substitute: “I have a cognitive test every single day. Everything I do.”

Offering another explanation for his poor performance, Biden tells Stephanopoulos Trump was “still shouting” when his mic was cut, and that, “I let it distract me.”

Pressed by Stephanopoulos on how his performance went poorly from the very start of the debate: Biden defaulted to the same one-bad-night rationale he and his team have been repeating since right after the debate was over:

“Yeah, look. The whole way I prepared, nobody’s fault, mine. Nobody’s fault but mine. I– I prepared what I usually would do sitting down as I did come back with foreign leaders or National Security Council for explicit detail. And I realized– partway through that, you know, all– I get quoted the New York Times had me down, ten points before the debate, nine now, or whatever the hell it is. The fact of the matter is, what I looked at is that he also lied 28 times. I couldn’t– I mean, the way the debate ran, not– my fault, nobody else’s fault, no one else’s fault.”

“But it seemed like you were having trouble from the first question in, even before he spoke?” Stephanopoulos asked.

“Well, I just had a bad night,” Biden said.

As a former colleague points out, this answer was not terribly coherent, just like some of Biden’s debate answers:

The White House and Biden have stressed that the president still hadn’t recovered from his recent trip to Europe as of debate night. Stephanopoulos questioned him about that, noting there was more than a week to recooperate before the debate. Per ABC News:

Stephanopoulos pressed Biden, “Why wasn’t that enough rest time, enough recovery time?”

“Because I was sick. I was feeling terrible,” Biden said. “Matter of fact the docs with me. I asked if they did a COVID test because they’re trying to figure out what was wrong. They did a test to see whether or not I had some infection, you know, a virus. I didn’t. I just had a really bad cold.”

Some of the interview aired ahead of time on ABC’s World News Tonight. According to the excerpts, Biden indicated that he had not watched the debate afterward.

He also repeated some of his previous explanations for what went wrong and, regarding his health, insisted there was “no indication of any serious condition.”

The entire interview reportedly lasted a little over 20 minutes.

Some of the president’s defiant messaging on Friday: