Embattled Biden prepares for leadership test in NATO press conference

President Joe Biden will hold a rare press conference on the sidelines of the 75th NATO summit that the White House has billed as a “big boy” event.

A make-or-break moment, the press conference comes as Biden faces mounting pressure from Democrats to appear in public without the help of a script and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) encourages her congressional colleagues to provide the president with this week to prove himself after last month’s first debate against former President Donald Trump.

Every time Biden speaks publicly between now and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month will be “a make-or-break moment,” according to party strategist Christopher Hahn, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), with Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) on Wednesday becoming the ninth House Democrat to call on the president to step down as nominee.

When asked whether that is a sustainable posture before November’s election, Hahn, host of the Aggressive Progressive podcast, told the Washington Examiner, “It’s not.”

Even if Biden performs well during Thursday evening’s press conference at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, it is “unlikely” to counter completely “the underlying issue of ‘is he too old?’” per another Democratic strategist, Stefan Hankin.

“If he does poorly, then it is likely the end of his campaign,” Hankin told the Washington Examiner. “It is hard to imagine that there will be one event that will erase all of the issues that the debate created, but Biden needs to start gaining the trust back and quickly.”

“The campaign needs to get some more unscripted events on the calendar quickly, but with the GOP convention next week, the timing of this all gets very murky,” he said.

To that end, NBC announced Wednesday anchor Lester Holt would interview Biden on Monday during his trip to Texas, with their sit-down to air during the first night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee amid speculation surrounding Trump’s vice presidential nomination.

For a third Democratic strategist, Tom Cochran, the decision regarding whether Biden remains the party’s nominee rests with the president but “his greatest strength is his greatest weakness at this point.”

“By this, I mean his ability to ‘get back up’ when he’s knocked down has sustained him through personal and professional tragedies,” Cochran told the Washington Examiner. “The bar certainly is being raised, and the burden of proof really is on him. His debate performance demonstrated that he wasn’t able to meet that burden of proof, and this is why there are growing rumblings inside the party to replace him at the top of the ticket.”

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Gary Peters (D-MI) told the Washington Examiner that Thursday’s press conference is “certainly” a good opportunity for Biden to mitigate concerns about his age and mental acuity, but Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) disagreed. Murphy described it as “a little dangerous to elevate one particular moment,” though he did agree that the president should try to be more “unscripted.”

Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT), who became the first Democratic senator to ask Biden to step aside, downplayed the possibility of concerns about Biden’s age and mental acuity “going away” after the press conference since it was “a big concern of voters going into the debate and that concern intensified after.”

“You’re focusing on a single event because that’s one that’s coming up, and then there’ll be another event next week and you’ll focus on that,” Welch told the Washington Examiner.

Biden is in the “difficult position” of having to prove a negative about his age and mental acuity, according to Middlebury College politics professor Bert Johnson.

“Short of beating Gary Kasparov at chess or Caitlin Clark at basketball, there’s not a whole lot he can do to dispel the questions people have about his mental and physical fitness,” Johnson told the Washington Examiner.

“Biden’s main advantage is that he has a firm hold on his convention delegates,” he said. “Absent a change of mind on his part, there’s no practical way to replace him, however much major donors and members of Congress may want an alternative. He and his campaign are clearly hoping to wait it out and survive the next few days without further gaffes. Each day that goes by, the less practical it is to change nominees, so time is on Biden’s side — at least in this particular sense.”

The press conference’s parameters are under wraps, but White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre did underscore this week that it would “be certainly more than a two-plus-two.” Biden’s press conferences with foreign heads of state or government tend to comprise two questions for each principal. But after reports first lady Jill Biden criticized her husband’s staff for not concluding an almost hourlong press conference after the 2022 midterm elections, it will unlikely be that long in duration.

The Biden campaign declined to comment to the Washington Examiner about the press conference, but Trump counterparts contended “Democrats are losing confidence” in the president “because of his failed record, weak leadership, dishonest policies, and obvious cognitive decline.”

“Crooked Joe Biden has made life worse for Americans — his border bloodbath brought millions of illegal immigrants unleashing violent crime in our cities, and Bidenomics made prices unaffordable for families,” Republican National Committee spokeswoman Anna Kelly told the Washington Examiner. “Even Biden’s allies and the media know that America needs to elect President Trump on Nov. 5.”

Pelosi on Wednesday repeated that Joe Biden should make a decision about the nomination “because time is running short” before the Democratic convention despite the president reiterating since the debate that he is the Democratic standard-bearer.

“I’ve said, ‘Everyone, let’s just hold off; whatever you’re thinking, either tell somebody privately, but you don’t have to put that out on the table until we see how we go this week,’” the former speaker told MSNBC.

Joe Biden’s other post-debate tests have included his interview last week with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, with the president scrutinized for denying Democrats want him to stand aside and that he is behind Trump in the polls. Questions were also raised on Monday during his telephone interview with MSNBC about whether he was reading from a script after it was revealed last weekend that the White House sent preapproved queries to the black radio stations that broadcasted his first post-debate sit-downs.

“I was in the room when the president called in to Morning Joe,” Jean-Pierre told reporters this week of the MSNBC breakfast program. “The president spoke from his heart. The president was very clear. There was no script at all. And he was very detailed.”

“You heard him say, actually, during the call that he was reading some quotes,” Jean-Pierre said. “He said it. He shared that information. He was reading some quotes from — from the debate. So, he shared that with you.”

“He was reading quotes but not from a script?” a reporter asked.

“Nope, it was not a script,” the press secretary replied.

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The NATO summit itself presents a separate test for Joe Biden on the international stage after world leaders, such as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, had to tap the president on the arm for a photograph at last month’s G7 leaders meeting in Italy.

The president opened the summit with a speech on Tuesday evening, followed by a day of meetings and a White House dinner Wednesday night. In addition to Thursday’s press conference, Joe Biden will have his own sit-downs with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

David Sivak and Ramsey Touchberry contributed to this report.