Over 18 minutes, the president repeated his assertion that he was staying in the race and suggested it was time to turn the focus back to Donald Trump.
- Share full article
President Biden has been campaigning in an attempt to stop anxiety in the Democratic establishment.
President Biden spoke directly to some of his biggest fund-raisers and donors on Monday, repeating his assertion that he was staying in the race and telling them they needed to shift the focus of the campaign away from him and onto former President Donald J. Trump.
“We can’t waste any more time being distracted,” Mr. Biden said, according to a video recording of the meeting viewed by The New York Times. “I have one job and that’s to beat Donald Trump — to beat Donald. I’m absolutely certain that I’m the best person to be able to do that. We’re done talking about the debate. It’s time to put Trump in the bull’s-eye.”
The president spent four minutes reading remarks to donors and another 14 responding to four questions. His appearance amounted to the most formal entreaty to his financiers since his poor debate performance over a week ago that they should stay the course.
His appearance, which was announced to his fund-raisers just 24 minutes before the call was set to begin, came after he sent a defiant letter to congressional Democrats on Monday morning rejecting the idea that he should drop out and gave an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in which he invited challengers to try to stop him at the party’s convention next month.
Mr. Biden took four questions on the donor call, with the gentle inquisitors announced by Rufus Gifford, his campaign’s finance chair, about how the president planned to proceed as a candidate.
One asked for a 30-second elevator pitch to relay to voters, to which Mr. Biden replied with a nearly two-minute soliloquy. Another sought to understand how Mr. Biden could weather this round of media criticism. A third wanted to know how he would handle the next debate.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Source: nytimes.com
