Photo: Ludovic Marin Agence France-Presse President Joe Biden participates in a working session at the NATO summit Thursday in Washington.
Aurélia End – Agence France-Presse in Washington
Posted at 12:07 p.m.
- United States
Joe Biden, who now stakes his political survival in every public appearance, will face a formidable test for his presidential candidacy on Thursday by giving a press conference, an exercise of which he is hardly fond.
And it will be “a big boy press conference,” the White House promises, without further details on duration or progress.
This curious expression is undoubtedly intended to distinguish this meeting from the short, well-marked question-and-answer sessions that the American president usually takes part in, during which journalists designated in advance ask questions.< /p>
At 6:30 p.m. — the time has been pushed back one hour from the original schedule — at the conference center which is hosting a NATO summit in Washington this week , Joe Biden will have to have repartee, express himself clearly, with a confident voice, without notes and without a teleprompter.
He was unable to do so on June 27 during a debate against his Republican predecessor Donald Trump, whom he remains determined to face in the November presidential election.
Since becoming president, Joe Biden has given 36 press conferences, according to researcher Martha Joynt Kumar, cited by Axios. Among his six predecessors, only Republican Ronald Reagan had done less.
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Mitterrand and Kohl
The Democrat, a former stutterer, has never been a flamboyant speaker, particularly when he improvises. With age, his speech becomes more and more laborious.
It is sometimes difficult to understand him because he swallows words, stammers or blurts out. expresses in a muffled voice.
His failures are sometimes spectacular: in February, he spoke in quick succession about former French President François Mitterrand, who died in 1996, instead of Emmanuel Macron, and mentioned the late Helmut Kohl in place of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Such errors on Thursday would be fatal for the 81-year-old democrat , who has so far resisted calls for withdrawal coming from his party but also from celebrities and wealthy people in the world of entertainment.
Actors George Clooney and Michael Douglas, director Rob Reiner, writer Stephen King, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, among others.
New York Times columnists have already called on him twice to step down.
On Thursday, they changed their focus, calling on voters “to recognize the dangers of a second Trump term and reject them” in November, in an op-ed published before the convention to swear in the 78-year-old billionaire begins next week.
Even game
An Ipsos poll released Thursday by the Washington Post and ABC shows Joe Biden and Donald Trump tied at 46% each in the polls national.
But 67 percent of those surveyed believe the U.S. president should withdraw his candidacy. Among Democratic voters alone, this is also the majority opinion, in smaller proportions, at 56%.
Questions about the endurance and energy of the Democratic leader has for two weeks stifled all attempts by her campaign team to redirect attention to Donald Trump, presented as a danger to democracy.
Thursday, she for example published, in connection with the NATO summit, a video describing the billionaire as a “poodle” of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A dozen elected Democrats in the House of Representatives and a senator have now openly called on their candidate to drop out, even if it means launching a potentially chaotic nomination race.
Democratic Party parliamentarians fear that Joe Biden will drag them down during the legislative elections which are being held at the same time as the presidential election.
Their leader in the House representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, told the Punchbowl News site on Thursday that he wanted to speak with “each” of the elected officials after which “we will meet at the group leadership level and we will decide the next step. »