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President Joe Biden admitted he “screwed up” and “made a mistake” at last week’s presidential debate, conceding that his performance was rocky in some of his first interviews since the meltdown.
“I had a bad night,” Biden told Earl Ingram on WAUK, a radio station based in Waukesha, Wisconsin. “I didn’t have a good debate. That’s 90 minutes on stage. Look at what I’ve done in 3.5 years.”
The president sat down for pre-recorded interviews with two radio stations — WAUK and WURD, the only African-American owned and operated talk radio station in Pennsylvania — as he attempts to calm the nerves of Democrats frantic about his ability to serve.
Over the past few days, he has made last-minute plans to convene more than 20 Democratic governors, call senior congressional leaders, interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos and travel to the swing states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Even then, a growing chorus of Democrats are urging him to quickly decide the future of his campaign — with at least two calling on him to step aside.
Should Biden not appear at the top of the ticket, some members of his party are rallying behind Vice President Kamala Harris as the second in line for the Democratic nomination. Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, a top ally of the president who helped rescue his campaign four years ago, said Wednesday that he’d support a “mini-primary” ahead of the Democratic convention later this summer if Biden stepped aside, though his staff later tried to clarify that the lawmaker was responding to a hypothetical question.
Biden told the governors at his meeting Wednesday evening that he got a medical checkup and is fine, POLITICO reported. Still, Govs. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico and Janet Mills of Maine expressed concern over whether he could win their blue-leaning states, two people with knowledge of the discussion said.
In his interviews with WAUK and WURD, which both aired Thursday morning, Biden seemed lucid as he discussed his record, Donald Trump and issues affecting Black Americans — a voting bloc he has struggled to keep firmly on his side. Ingram said during his show that he was initially scheduled to speak with Biden for less than 10 minutes, but the conversation stretched more than double that. On WURD, he interviewed with host Andrea Lawful-Sanders for nearly 15 minutes.
When Lawful-Sanders asked Biden whether Americans should be concerned after his debate performance, Biden gave a simple response: “No.”
“I had a bad debate,” the president said, laughing. “But 90 minutes on stage does not erase what I’ve done for three and a half years.”
A Biden campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from POLITICO.
Biden has rearranged his holiday weekend schedule to hit the campaign trail in Madison, Wisconsin, on Friday and Philadelphia on Sunday — two key battlegrounds he barely won against Trump in 2020.
His interview with Stephanopoulos will now “air in its entirety as a primetime special” on Friday at 8 p.m. EST, and a transcript of the unedited interview will become available the same day, ABC News announced. While in Wisconsin, Biden will sit down with Stephanopoulos earlier on Friday.
