President Joe Biden’s appearance to voters as “trustworthy” sharply declined after delivering an incoherent performance during the first presidential debate, a new survey revealed.
Thirty-six percent of people view Biden as “honest and trustworthy,” according to a YouGov poll from this week. That number is a precipitous drop from 46% of voters who felt that way in a March Gallup poll.
Biden seeks to shore up support during a campaign event in swing state Arizona in March 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Comparisons between the two surveys show former President Donald Trump has also seen a drop in people who believe the former president is honest, in this case 4%. However, Biden’s campaign has made it a point to attack Trump as dishonest and a threat to democracy, meaning the classification could mean a lot more to the Democratic Party.
Concerns over Biden’s trustworthiness have accelerated after his stumbling presidential debate last month and his subsequent attempts to control the damage.
The YouGov survey shows a combined 58% of voters believe the Democratic Party should either replace Biden as its nominee or remain unsure of what approach the Left should take. Only 42% say they are committed to supporting Biden as the Democratic nominee.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) attempted to shift the national focus to former President Donald Trump’s connections to notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and away from the Democratic Party’s future.
“We hear a lot from our constituents on different issues,” Lieu said at the news conference Tuesday. “But something I’ve heard that doesn’t seem to be being covered are the Epstein files.”
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) speaks as House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar (D-CA) listens during a press conference, Tuesday, July 9, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/John McDonnell)
On Tuesday, Lieu touted court filings alleging Trump flew with, exchanged phone calls, and took numerous photos with Epstein. The conference came as the Biden White House struggles to shut down intraparty squabbles surrounding concerns about the president’s mental acuity.
A spokesman for the Trump campaign called Lieu’s comments part of his “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
“Ted is a total degenerate and loser who continues to beclown himself,” Steven Cheung told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday. “He has let Trump Derangement Syndrome rot his brain and, instead of getting the proper care he so desperately needs, has allowed himself to be the laughingstock of all his colleagues, who secretly joke about his glaring shortcomings.”
Lieu’s press briefing came after Florida Circuit Judge Luis Delgado unsealed hundreds of documents associated with the Epstein case last week. The documents are from a 2006 court case surrounding allegations Epstein raped underage girls.
Epstein was a fixture in Palm Beach, Florida, where Trump enjoyed spending time at his Mar-a-Lago golf course for decades. Trump has long admitted he had a friendship with Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s, saying “everybody in Palm Beach” knew the disgraced financier. However, the former president claims an argument between the two around 2004 ended their relationship.
In 2019, Trump told reporters he hadn’t spoken to Epstein for 15 years due to a “falling out.”
His words came about 17 years after he told New York Magazine he had known Epstein for 15 years. “Terrific guy,” Trump said in 2002. At the time, a spokesman for former President Bill Clinton also lauded the disgraced financier in remarks to the magazine. Clinton was also named in Epstein documents released at the beginning of 2024.
A photo provided by the New York State Sex Offender Registry shows Jeffrey Epstein. (New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP, File)
“Jeffrey is both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of twenty-first-century science. I especially appreciated his insights and generosity during the recent trip to Africa to work on democratization, empowering the poor, citizen service, and combating HIV/AIDS,” the Clinton spokesman said in a statement to the magazine.
After being arrested on charges of tracking minors in July 2019, Epstein died in prison a month later due to an alleged suicide. Official reports record his death as a suicide, although critics, including Epstein’s brother and then-U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, worried about “serious irregularities at this facility that are deeply concerning and demand a thorough investigation.”
Democrats‘ intraparty squabble about President Joe Biden’s shaky bid for reelection is widening as two Nevada representatives split on the president’s electability.
While Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV), the powerful head of the Congressional Black Caucus, remains steadfast in his support for Biden, one of his Democratic colleagues is sounding uneasy.
“I expressed serious concerns after the debate, and I still have them,” Rep. Susie Lee(D-NV) told the Nevada Independent on Monday. “[Biden] needs to prove to the American public that he can do the job for four more years.”
Both Horsford’s and Lee’s seats are considered competitive, with both representatives clinching a win in 2022 by under 5%. Lee’s district is especially vulnerable to Republican takeback after she retained her seat in a tight race last election cycle by fewer than 10,000 votes.
Lee stands onstage before Biden speaks in Las Vegas earlier this year. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
In an open letter to Democrats on Monday, Biden urged his party to get behind his bid for reelection.
“Any weakening of resolve or lack of clarity about the task ahead only helps Trump and hurts us,” Biden wrote as he fields calls from his own party to step down as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. “It’s time to come together, move forward as a unified party, and defeat Donald Trump.
Biden rebuked critics’ calls for him to step aside, saying that doing so would subvert democratic elections.
“We had a democratic nomination process and the voters have spoken clearly and decisively. I received over fourteen million votes,” the president wrote. “Do we now just say this process didn’t matter? That the voters don’t have a say?”
Horsford’s defense of Biden’s tightening grasp on his reelection campaign echoed the letter’s argument.
“President Joe Biden is the nominee and has been selected by millions of voters across this country, including voters here in Nevada,” Horsford posted Monday.
Biden listens as Horsford speaks during a 2024 visit to Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Meanwhile, Lee’s concerns about Biden’s mental fitness don’t mean she has completely abandoned the president.
“I do know that President Biden has brought America historic infrastructure investments, new jobs, and lower prescription drug and healthcare costs,” she told the Nevada Independent. “Trump is a 34-time convicted felon who helped overturn Roe v. Wade and is a threat to our democracy, national security, and Nevadans’ fundamental rights.”
While President Joe Biden has always enjoyed Hollywood‘s full embrace, the 81-year-old has seen a fallout from celebrities’ good graces after his incoherent debate performance.
Under three weeks ago, Biden proudly stood beside the likes of George Clooney, Barbara Streisand, and Julia Roberts as the stars headlined a glitzy fundraiser for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
The Los Angeles event, held at the Peacock Theater, generated $30 million for Biden and came before the president’s disastrous performance at the first debate. Even then, an incident caught the attention of critics who noted that former President Barack Obama was forced to gently lead his friend off the event stage after Biden awkwardly gaped at the audience.
President Joe Biden shakes hands with George Clooney during the Kennedy Center honorees reception at the White House. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
While celebrities such as Roberts and Clooney might have overlooked the incident and an abundance of similar situations leading up to the fundraiser, the June 27 debate was the nail in the coffin for Biden’s relationship with many Hollywood stars.
From Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, who has made $20 million in donations to the Democratic Party, to Disney heiress Abigail Disney, Biden has lost the support of many Hollywood moguls in the nine days since the debate.
“Step aside to allow a vigorous Democratic leader to beat Trump and keep us safe and prosperous,” Hastings urged Biden, according to the New York Times.
Meanwhile, Disney, a major Democratic donor, told the outlet she was withdrawing donations to Democrats “until they bite the bullet and replace Biden at the top of the ticket.”
The Disney heiress and Netflix titan are far from the only Democratic celebrity donors withdrawing their support from Biden.
After the debate, Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof also pledged to withhold donations to the Democratic Party until it makes a change at the top of the ticket.
“For me, this isn’t about the ability to govern, it’s about the ability to WIN,” he wrote in an email to the New York Times earlier this week. According to the outlet, the Hollywood icon has donated $125,000 this election cycle to the Biden campaign and nearly the same amount to Democratic Senate and House candidates.
Additionally, former DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, who organized the Peacock Theater fundraiser, has been uncharacteristically silent since the debate. He has declined to comment to media outlets on withdrawing his support.
Top Democratic strategist and former Obama adviser David Axelrod slammed President Joe Biden after the 81-year-old refused to heed concerns about his mental decline during his latest interview.
In an op-ed for CNN on Saturday, Axelrod expressed his concern that Biden’s ABC interview only exacerbated concerns about the president’s mental decline.
“Biden could be excused for wanting to put his awful debate performance in the rear view mirror. That was his purpose Friday in sitting down for the interview — to try and quell the panic that has gripped the Democratic Party,” Axelrod wrote. “He didn’t succeed.”
David Axelrod speaks during a memorial service for former U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl, Friday, Jan. 12, 2024, at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
During an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Friday, Biden glazed over concerns that his mental state is compromised and rebuffed demands that he take a cognitive test.
“It was a bad episode,” the president told Stephanopoulos as they discussed Biden’s incoherent debate performance last week. “No indication of any serious condition. I was exhausted. I didn’t listen to my instincts in terms of preparing and — and a bad night.”
The president’s debate performance was at times rambling and incomprehensible as Biden froze several times and trailed off in response to many of the moderators’ questions.
During the ABC interview, Biden continued to stand firm against taking a neurological test after Stephanopoulos repeatedly pressed the president on the matter.
“Look. I have a cognitive test every single day. Every day I have that test. Everything I do,” Biden told Stephanopoulos. “You know, not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world.”
Axelrod slammed Biden for refusing to wake up to concerns that his reelection is headed for failure, writing that Biden is “likely headed for a landslide defeat to a lawless and unpopular former president.”
Axelrod used three words to describe Biden’s failure to drop out of the race: “Denial. Delusion. Defiance.”
The political strategist rounded out his searing critique with a warning for the president.
If Biden doesn’t drop out, he wrote, “it will be Biden’s age, and not Trump’s moral and ethical void, that will dominate the rest of this most important campaign and sully the president’s historic legacy.”
This isn’t the first time the Democratic strategist has had strong words for Biden. In early May, he called Biden’s refusal to prioritize voters’ economic concerns “a terrible mistake.”
In addition to prominent left-wing strategists, Democratic members of Congress are calling on Biden to step aside. On Saturday, Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN) became the fifth House Democrat to break with their party as she called on Biden to withdraw from the presidential race.
As President Joe Biden attempts to prove his mental fitness to voters, two radio hosts say the Biden campaign provided them questions for interviews with the presumed Democratic nominee.
On Saturday, CNN’s Victor Blackwell interviewed two radio hosts who interviewed Biden this week — Andrea Lawful-Sanders and Earl Ingram. During their conversation, Blackwell noted that both hosts asked the president nearly identical sets of questions and asked if the Biden campaign had given them questions for the interviews.
Lawful-Sanders, the host of The Source on WURD in Philadelphia, answered in the affirmative. Ingram, who invited Biden on The Earl Ingram Show on WMCS in Milwaukee, did not dispute her answer.
“The questions were sent to me for approval; I approved of them,” Lawful-Sanders told Victor Blackwell, CNN’s host of First of All on Saturday.
“I got several questions — eight of them,” the radio host said, referring to the questions she would ask Biden during a radio interview on Wednesday. “And the four that were chosen were the ones that I approved.”
President Joe Biden speaks at a campaign rally at Sherman Middle School in Madison, Wisconsin, Friday, July 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
Lawful-Sanders defended using the questions provided to her, telling the Washington Post, “When I was asked to do this interview it was most important to me to have the voices of the Black people heard. I never once felt pressured to ask certain questions. I chose questions that were most important to the black and brown communities we serve in … Philadelphia. Those questions proved to be exactly what black and brown communities desired.”
On Wednesday, Biden made appearances on both Lawful-Sanders’s and Ingram’s shows. His media rounds came after the president attempted to prove he was mentally fit after his incoherent debate performance last week. Biden mumbled and froze his way through the June 27 debate, repeatedly losing his train of thought and alarming Democrats with incoherent answers.
Biden appeared on the two radio shows in an attempt to stave off surging concerns that he cannot win reelection and calls from his own party to drop out. The hosts’ admission that questions were scripted has sparked backlash from critics who say the campaign’s actions bely an honest attempt to prove the president’s mental acuity.
Despite the scripted questions, Biden fumbled during both interviews.
Biden told Lawful-Sanders he was proud to be “the first Black woman to serve with a Black president.”
During his conversation with Ingram, Biden waded through another confusing reply after he was asked why voting matters.
“That’s where we always — we gave Donald Trump executive — a power to to use a system — and it’s just never contemplated by our founders because of the people he appointed to the court,” he told Ingram. “It’s just presidential immunity. He can say that I did this in my capacity as an executive, it may have been wrong, but I did it. But that’s going to hold — because I — and this is the same guy who says that he wants to enact revenge.”
The Biden campaign has pushed back on criticism that the president can’t handle unscripted questions.
Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt defended the campaign aides providing questions, telling the Washington Examiner in a statement that “it’s not at all an uncommon practice,” when pressed about sending the questions to the hosts.
“These questions were relevant to the news of the day — the president was asked about this debate performance as well as what he’d delivered for black Americans,” she added. “We do not condition interviews on acceptance of these questions, and hosts are always free to ask the questions they think will best inform their listeners.”
A Republican congressional candidate from Utah is suing a Washington County clerk after losing his race by a narrow margin.
Colby Jenkins lost his primary race in Utah’s 2nd Congressional District by approximately 300 votes last week after challenging incumbent Rep. Celeste Maloy (R-UT).
In the wake of the narrow loss, Jenkins has taken his case to court over 531 ballots that were submitted by voters but disqualified from being counted by the Salt Lake County’s clerk’s office. Washington County Clerk Ryan Sullivan says the ballots had signatures that did not match, otherwise known as the “uncured” ballot list.
Sullivan has rebuffed the Jenkins campaign’s request to obtain the list of rejected ballots so they can contact voters and determine whether their vote can count. Nearly all of the rejected ballots come from Washington County, where Jenkins held a firm lead over Maloy.
Maloy and Jenkins debate during Utah’s 2nd Congressional district debate in June. (Scott G. Winterton/The Deseret News via AP, Pool)
Jenkins questioned the motivation behind Sullivan’s decision to deny access to the ballots online Friday.
“While many counties have managed to cure all or almost all of their ballots, Washington County still has a whopping 531 uncured ballots,” the congressional candidate said.
“We find it a suspicious coincidence that such a large number of ballots are being withheld in a county that Mr. Jenkins is winning with nearly 60% of the vote.
Judge Jay Winward has agreed to hear Jenkins’s case on July 8. That is just one day before the deadline for voters to “cure” or remedy any problems with the election.
This isn’t the first time the Utah congressional contest has stirred up drama. Former President Donald Trump sparked buzz after he endorsed Jenkins’s primary opponent, Maloy. The decision came even though Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), a Trump ally, backed Jenkins.
Jenkins called Trump’s decision “surprising.”
“Celeste Maloy is a Never-Trumper who has referred to President Trump as a dictator. Until about five minutes ago she refused to even mention the name ‘Trump,’” Jenkins said last month.
Maloy’s public statements have remained largely neutral over the last week as her opponent battles to access the rejected ballots.
“The waiting is the hardest part,” she posted to X in a statement on Sunday. “I know this has been a challenge for all of us as we watch and wait for the ballots to be counted.”
She added praise for the county clerks, saying “I’m grateful to the county clerks and their teams for the hard work they are putting in to ensure an accurate count.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to the Jenkins and Maloy campaigns for comment.
Republicans haven’t won New Hampshire in a presidential election in decades. However, as President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance rocked the Democratic Party, political strategists say there’s an opening for former President Donald Trump to flip the state this November.
Political science experts are pointing to two polls indicating Biden has cause for concern in a state that typically has Democratic presidential candidates’ backs.
A poll conducted after the debate by New Hampshire’s Saint Anselm College Survey Center shows Trump leading Biden by 2 points in the Granite State.
Last week’s poll follows a a late May survey conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, which gave Biden only a single-digit edge.
That’s a drop from 2020 when Biden handily won New Hampshire with a 7% lead.
“I do think we are now in a battleground,” Neil Levesque, executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College, told Fox News.
Trump greets supporters at a campaign stop in Londonderry, New Hampshire in January, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
The Trump campaign has jumped for the jugular.
“Joe Biden abandoned New Hampshire when he canned our first in the nation primary, and his policies have given our state more inflation, record-high energy bills, an increasingly unaffordable housing market, and an immigration crisis at our northern Canadian border,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told the Washington Examiner.
She said Biden’s set to “[lose] the Granite State and President Trump is poised to flip it red for the first time in more than twenty years.”
New England College president Wayne Lesperance, a veteran New Hampshire-based political science professor, agreed, telling Fox News that his state “is in play.”
“Biden’s performance at the most recent debate has pushed Democrats to question his ability to campaign, win and govern. Recent polls in New Hampshire point to continued rock-solid support by Republicans for Trump. Democratic support seems to be faltering with some looking at independent candidates,” Lesperance said. “As long as questions remain about Biden’s ability to go forward, the President will continue to bleed support, putting the Granite State in play.”
While New Hampshire Republican Party Chairman Christopher Ager told the Washington Examiner that New Hampshire is “definitely a battleground state after the debate — you can feel the momentum shifting in favor of President Trump,” Republicans have their work cut out for them. With wins in every presidential race in New Hampshire since before 9/11, Democrats hold a significant infrastructural advantage over the GOP. The Biden campaign has 14 offices across the state. The Trump campaign has only one field office.
Meanwhile, Levesque warns that in New Hampshire, “the good news for Biden is he’s weak with the people who self-describe as very liberal. Just 67% support. That means, in the end, most likely many of those people are going to vote for Biden even if they don’t want to admit it right now.”
New Hampshire voters are famously independent. As 2023 came to a close, Republican Jay Ruais successfully challenged four-term Democratic Mayor Joyce Craig in Manchester, flipping the city red for the first time in years, and proving neither party can afford to take votes for granted in the Granite State
The Black evangelical, Mormon, and Muslim voting blocks aren’t traditionally top concerns for presidential campaigns, but religious groups’ loss of enthusiasm for President Joe Biden in swing states could deal a blow to Democrats this November.
The Harvard-run Cooperative Election Study shows the Biden campaign might have cause for worry about the president’s loss of popularity in some voting blocks across swing states from 2021 to 2023, according to a report from the Salt Lake Tribune.
Arizona is home to a large Mormon population, while a significant number of Muslims reside in Michigan. Both religious communities’ support for Biden is on the decline, a trend that could prove critical in the swing states.
In 2023, one in five Latter Day Saints members approved of Biden, down from nearly a third of support in 2021, according to the study. The decline spells trouble for Biden in Arizona, where nearly half a million Mormons reside.
The president’s popularity has dropped even more with Muslim voters, where Biden has experienced a 12% drop in support since 2021. Nearly a quarter of a million Muslims call Michigan home, the most of any state, making the decline an important one.
Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News in Dearborn, Michigan. As the war in Gaza enters its seventh month, some Muslim and Arab American leaders have grown frustrated with outreach from President Joe Biden’s White House. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)
Muslim activists attribute part of their community’s decline of support for Biden to his position on the war in Gaza. Satin Tashnizi, executive director of Emerald Project, a nonprofit organization that supports empowering young Muslims, told the outlet the Muslim community feels “incredibly betrayed” by the administration’s support for the “genocide of Palestinians.”
“[As a candidate,] Biden expressed a lot of support for the Muslim community and talked about how Trump’s Islamophobic policies were unacceptable,” Tashnizi remembered. “It’s now crystal clear that there’s an inherent lack of value for Palestinian life.”
Allies of former President Donald Trump have jumped to take advantage of the division within the Democratic Party. Last month, the Associated Press reported powerful Arab American and Trump ally Massad Boulos is ramping up outreach to Muslims in Michigan. Boulos’s son married Trump’s youngest daughter, Tiffany, in 2022.
The businessman believes Trump can make inroads with the Muslim community by capitalizing on fractures in the Democratic base over the war in Gaza. Boulos has aligned himself with the group Arab Americans for Trump.
In May, he appeared at an event the group held in Michigan attended by 40 Arab American activists. The following month, Boulos attended a fundraising event in the state, along with House Speaker Mike Johnson and 50 Arab Americans.
Former President Donald Trump during an outreach event for Black evangelicals at 180 Church, Saturday, June 15, 2024, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)
Meanwhile, the president has experienced a 9-point drop in support from African American Protestants, a voting block widely deemed crucial to Biden’s 2020 win.
Research from the Brookings Institution shows some black evangelicals are increasingly discontent with the Democratic Party’s stance on moral matters such as gay marriage.
“There has been a double-digit increase in the percentage of African Americans who claim to be political “conservatives,” the Brooking Institution’s report adds.
Democratic governors are backing President Joe Biden after they convened a sudden meeting to share concerns and assess the party’s future with Biden as its leader.
On Wednesday evening, every Democratic governor across the country, except for Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI), met in person at the White House or virtually as concerns in the Democratic Party grow that the 81-year-old commander in chief’s mental state is compromised.
In remarks to reporters following the meeting, Govs. Wes Moore (D-MD), Tim Walz (D-MN), and Kathy Hochul (D-NY) expressed confidence in the president’s ability to lead the party.
Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) speaks to reporters after meeting with President Joe Biden as Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) and Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD) listen. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
“We were honest about the concerns we were hearing from people,” Moore said, admitting the Democratic Party is “behind” but expressing enthusiasm that Biden’s path to reelection is “real.” He also said the conversation was “candid.”
Walz added that “the feedback was we’re all looking for the path to win.” He told reporters, “The governors have his back.”
Hochul finished out the trio’s remarks to the media by saying Biden is “in it to win it!”
Govs. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), both widely considered to be presidential “backups” for Biden, shared their support in statements on social media.
“I heard three words from the President tonight — he’s all in. And so am I,” Newsom said. The California governor urged his party to get behind their nominee, saying, “[Joe Biden’s] had our back. Now it’s time to have his.”
Whitmer fell in line with a similar message.
“[Joe Biden] is our nominee,” the Michigan Democrat posted on Wednesday. “He is in it to win it and I support him.”
Gov. Roy Cooper (D-NC), who governs a swing state that will be critical to securing a win for Biden this November, chimed in his support.
“[Biden] will be our nominee, and we’ll continue doing everything we can to deliver North Carolina for him,” Cooper said in a statement.
Trump secured a narrow victory in North Carolina in 2020. The former president has widened his lead by a substantial margin heading into July.
The Biden campaign celebrated the meeting as a success in its efforts to shore up support with key Democrats.
“All participants reiterated their shared commitment to do everything possible to make sure President Biden and Vice President Harris beat Donald Trump in November,” the campaign said in a statement following the meeting.
The White House called the meeting after Biden came under fire for his performance during last week’s first presidential debate with former President Donald Trump. Top Democratic strategists and officials voiced concerns that the president is unable to lead their party to victory this November after a debate performance full of memory lapses, trailed-off sentences, and jumbled thoughts.
