The debate featured “an extraordinarily aggressive, top-to-bottom attack,” Politico wrote. “Over and over,” one candidate’s “tactic of choice was a gut-level punch.” An “alpha-male display,” Britain’s left-wing Guardian headlined. The dominant candidate’s style, CNN agreed, was “put your head down, charge forward, and don’t stop.”

No, those were not comments about last Thursday’s earliest-in-history presidential debate. They were analyses made 12 years ago after the October 2012 vice presidential debate between Paul Ryan and his much more aggressive opponent, Joe Biden.

Biden was then the incumbent vice president, determined to offset Barack Obama’s indolent performance against Mitt Romney in the campaign’s first presidential debate eight days before. His forceful, often mocking approach obscured his frequent misstatements and factual errors, but he reversed the Democratic ticket’s downward plunge in the polls.   

The contrast between Biden’s 2012 and 2024 performances is glaring and a reminder of the ravages of age. But the two debates may also turn out to represent a turning point in the politics of, and the balance between, the two parties.

Going into the 2012 debate, Ryan at age 42 looked to me like the future of Republican politics.

As House Budget chairman, he had gotten his colleagues to back his package of tax cuts and entitlement reforms while looking favorably on free trade and legalization of worthy illegal immigrants.

But the bombast and ridicule Biden inflicted on Ryan in the 2012 debate was a foretaste of the bombast and ridicule former President Donald Trump inflicted on multiple rivals in presidential primary debates in 2016 — and which he inflicted on the (to many voters) surprisingly inert Biden last week.

As speaker of the House for 38 months from October 2015, Ryan helped shape and pass Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. But from the time he came down the Trump Tower escalator, Trump repudiated Ryan’s stands on entitlements, trade, and immigration. By now, almost all Republican officeholders have followed his lead.

Meanwhile, under Biden, Democrats moved sharply left on key issues, with an open borders policy, vast spending increases (on top of Trump’s) sparking first-time-in-four-decades inflation, and ninth-month abortions. Trump hit Biden hard on such leftward lunges last week.

Will the 2024 debate in which Biden got shellshocked have a similar politics-altering effect to the 2012 debate in which he administered the shellshocking?

Of course we don’t yet know the fallout of this year’s debate. Thoughtful liberals like polling analyst Nate Silver, issues advocate Ezra Klein, and the gifted reporter Joe Klein are pleading that Biden withdraw and Democrats nominate someone stronger than his hand-picked vice president, Kamala Harris.

But Democratic politicians have, as the younger Klein writes, a “collective action” problem: Retribution awaits the first dissenters from the public Biden-should-stay consensus. And as shown in Biden’s 36 years of commuting from the Senate home to Delaware and his nearly 300 days there as president (according to CBS’s Mark Knoller), he’s never been close to Washington insiders. He has relied instead largely on family members, all of whom are reportedly strongly against withdrawal.

It’s still possible he could win. Silver gives that a 31% likelihood, just above the 29% he gave Trump of winning going into the 2016 election. Things that likely tend to happen about one-third of the time.

But two-thirds of the time they don’t. Trump was ahead going into the debate, initial polling suggests his lead has grown since, and he seems to have significant leads in states (including Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia, which he lost in 2020) with 268 electoral votes, two short of a majority. Add Pennsylvania or Michigan or Wisconsin or Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District and he’s president again. And probably with a Republican House and Republican Senate.

Democrats looking back on the last three decades brag that they’ve won five of the last eight presidential elections and have carried the popular vote in seven. A Trump presidency, if it were as successful with voters as the pre-COVID first Trump term was, could be followed by a second and possibly two-term Republican presidency.

Possible Trump VP nominees Sens. J.D. Vance (R-OH) or Tom Cotton (R-AR), or Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), whom he shoved aside this year, look to me as at least as gifted at politics and policy as any Democrat I’ve seen mentioned as national nominees.

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So one possible result of the Biden debate debacle could be 12 years of Republican popular vote victories and presidencies, something achieved only once since 1952, in Ronald Reagan’s 1980s. That would represent success for the Republican politics of Trump and would surely, sooner or later, prompt a rethink of the Democratic politics of Biden.

Is that too much to extrapolate from a single debate? Probably. But it would be poetic justice if the devastation Biden inflicted on Ryan’s ideas were inflicted in turn by Trump on Biden’s.

Conservative activists are sounding the alarm to counter efforts that the Republican platform could dilute anti-abortion language — a departure from decades of precedence.

In a preemptive move, a group of 10 anti-abortion leaders sent a letter to former President Donald Trump, pressuring him not to back away from language in the GOP platform against abortion. The drastic move is evidence of rising fear among conservatives that Trump’s consistent statements that abortion should now be left up to states after the fall of Roe v. Wade could become the national stance of the GOP.

The Republican platform has not been updated since 2016 and was re-approved in 2020. The more than 60-page platform included a federal abortion ban after 20 weeks, which Trump has not publicly said he supports.

This time around, the platform committee will hold a closed-door session to determine the party platform a week before the Republican National Convention begins on July 15, which will reportedly be scaled back from 2016. C-SPAN will not broadcast the meeting in another departure from precedence.

The letter, obtained by the Washington Examiner, praises the former president for being the “most pro-life president in American history” but then urges Trump to “make clear that you do not intend to weaken the pro-life plank.” The letter was first reported by the New York Times.

“We believe it is critical for voters to know that you and the Republican Party continue to stand for life,” the letter states. The leaders also urged Trump to include language that supports a “human life amendment to the Constitution” and legislation that clearly states the 14th Amendment’s protection applies to “children before birth.”

Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition; Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America; and Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council were among the group of people who signed the letter.

Dannenfelser emailed the letter to Susie Wiles, Trump’s campaign senior adviser, on June 10. The SBA Pro-Life America leader remained supportive of Trump in a statement to the Washington Examiner but also pushed for anti-abortion language in the platform.

“In order for us to keep the momentum and win in November, we must remain unified. Our only request is that the GOP platform retain a key principle as it has for 40 years, asserting a constitutional right to life for the unborn under the 14th Amendment,” said Dannenfelser.

But Trump has long signaled that publicly supporting a federal abortion ban could cost the GOP the White House after the GOP faced stinging losses in 2022 and 2023. He, and by extension, his campaign, has instead insisted that Democrats are “radical” on abortion while maintaining that each state should decide how far to limit abortion.

“President Trump has long been consistent in supporting the rights of states to make decisions on abortion,” said Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, in a statement that did not directly address the letter’s concerns. “Joe Biden and the Democrats are radically out of touch with the majority of Americans in their support for abortion up until birth and even after birth, and forcing taxpayers to fund it.”

Democrats have successfully run on defending abortion rights since the Supreme Court struck down Roe in 2022. Fearing that another abortion theme election cycle could sink his campaign, Trump has tried to walk a fine line between bragging over helping overturn Roe by nominating three conservative Supreme Court justices while trying to appear liberal on the matter.

Toning down the GOP’s platform stance on abortion could help to prevent attacks on abortion from Democrats when the Republican National Convention is held in Milwaukee later this month. Wiles and Chris LaCivita, a Trump campaign senior adviser, alluded to preventing attacks from Democrats in a memo sent out last week.

“Publishing an unnecessarily verbose treatise will provide more fuel for our opponent’s fire of misinformation and misrepresentation to voters,” the pair wrote.

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, was not one of the signees of the letter to Trump but she claimed that the scaled-back GOP platform was not an issue for her organization.

“The length of the platform is not a concern for Pro-Life voters. It’s not the number of words, but the intent that matters,” Hawkins said in a statement.” If the GOP wants to succinctly pledge to protect life in law and in service, from conception to natural death, as well as end the weaponized abuse of federal programs and agencies in support of abortion and cut  taxpayer funding to Planned Parenthood and other abortion vendors, that’s a solid agenda worthy of support.”

In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Kristi Hamrick, vice president of media and policy for Students for Life of America, claimed that a lack of definitive language in support of life would be a problem for social conservatives.

“What we are saying to the RNC leadership is the goal should be a strong defense of life,” said Hamrick. “To water it down or to insinuate that the goal is less than that, that would be the problem.”

“From our perspective, if you’re running for federal office, you should have a federal plan for dealing with the human rights issue of our day,” Hamrick added, pushing back against claims that abortion should be left to states to decide.

Although conservatives may be anxious over what happens to abortion in the party platform, the decision to limit the amount of infighting is a wise choice, according to Republicans, who are itching to retake the White House.

“While it will be a missed opportunity to guide the direction of the Republican Party over the next four years, it’s a smart move in the interim since the Trump campaign and RNC must deal with a small but vocal faction of social conservatives who want the GOP to take politically stupid positions on gay marriage and abortion,” a GOP strategist who requested anonymity to speak candidly said. “A televised, gavel-to-gavel platform committee meeting would surely be a distraction.”

Trump allies, Randy Evans, a former U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg under Trump; Russell Vought, a former Trump administration Office of Management and Budget director; and Ed Martin, president of the right-leaning Phyllis Schlafly Eagles, are heading the platform committee guaranteeing Trump’s wishes will be fulfilled.

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Yet some GOP experts remain unfazed by whether abortion is in the party platform, citing the toothless nature of the endeavor.

“The official platforms of both parties have become meaningless in the grand scheme of campaigns and elections as few undecided voters actually make their decision based on the platform,” said Dennis Lennox, a Republican consultant. “The only people who care about the platform are the influence groups who seek to put something in the document and rank-and-file activists, who view the platform as some kind of creed or holy writ to attack fellow Republicans in primaries and races for intra-party offices.”

President Joe Biden is delivering remarks following a Supreme Court ruling granting former President Donald Trump some form of immunity from federal prosecution over his actions after the 2020 election.

In a 6-3 ruling on Monday, the Supreme Court found that presidents are granted “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority” and “presumptive immunity” for all official acts. However, it held there is no immunity for “unofficial” acts.

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The ruling was a major victory for Trump, as it drastically undercuts special counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 Capitol riot case against the former president.

Democrats almost unanimously denounced the decision, with Biden expected to join the choir.

When the Supreme Court overruled Chevron deference on Friday, it may have also stripped the Biden administration’s only line of defense for overhauling Title IX, experts say.

The Title IX rewrite, which is set to take effect Aug. 1, redefined sex to include expansive claims of gender identity and, many critics say, foreclosed sex-specific facilities in schools such as restrooms and locker rooms. However, with the overturn of Chevron, the Biden administration may have lost the only way it could have defended the highly controversial rules governing the civil rights law.

“For a multitude of reasons, all of the Title IX litigants are virtually guaranteed success by the Supreme Court, but with Chevron‘s death knell, I would say that that is now doubly virtually guaranteed: Any deference that would have been automatically given to the Biden administration has just been completely eliminated,” Sarah Parshall Perry, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the Washington Examiner.

The Title IX overhaul by the Department of Education is being challenged in court by 26 states through multiple lawsuits and has been blocked in 10 so far. Under Chevron, executive agencies were given deference by courts to their interpretations of “silent or ambiguous” statutes, but now courts will once again have the authority to interpret whether an agency has overstepped the meaning of the law rather than allowing agencies to define statutes for themselves.

Prior to Title IX being finalized and Chevron being overturned, the Alliance Defending Freedom filed an amicus brief in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Supreme Court case that overturned Chevron, arguing Chevron would have been used to defend the redefined statute, saying, “The agency will likely inevitably [invoke] Chevron deference” in its legal defense of the new Title IX.

“No court should be forced by Chevron to defer to the Department’s claim that Title IX means the opposite of what it says,” the brief stated. “The statute deals with discrimination on the basis of sex, not gender identity, and Title IX’s direct reference to a male-female binary excludes any gender identity interpretation.”

Such deference, ADF argued, would have allowed the government to invoke harm on women and girls who would be forced to compete against males, compel speech through requiring teachers and students to use programs and names that are not consistent with biological sex, or have schools facilitate child gender transitions without the knowledge or consent of parents.

“As things stand, Chevron remains a shield for executive-branch officials seeking to impose these harms,” the ADF brief said.

Perry said the Biden administration was relying on an argument that Title IX, a 37-word statute meant to protect women’s educational opportunities, was ambiguous, as Biden administration officials believe sex could mean any multitude of things.

Chevron deference has only been invoked one time by the Department of Education, in a 2007 case regarding the distribution of federal impact aid, but it has reentered the conversation amid all the changes the Biden administration made to Title IX.

“Conceivably, the only reason that it’s never been invoked is because the Department of Education has never taken such extensive liberties within an illegal interpretation of the law,” Perry said, calling the overturn of Chevron as it relates to Title IX a “form of insurance” in the success of the legal challenges.

Moreover, U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves, in granting a block to the Title IX rules for Tennessee, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia, took Chevron head-on, arguing that the new rules were so far outside the boundaries of the statute that Chevron could not likely save them either.

“An agency has no authority to promulgate a regulation that undoes the unambiguous language of the statute,” Reeves wrote before the overturn of Chevron.

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In overturning the precedent, Perry said the nation’s high court “may have actually taken it with an eye toward the fact that this administration has been out over its skis and acted illegally time and time again.”

Citing occasions the Supreme Court has overruled instances of the Biden administration’s use of authority prior to dismantling Chevron, such as in the case of the vaccine mandate from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the eviction moratorium from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or emissions caps from the Environmental Protection Agency, Perry said when a Title IX challenge eventually reaches the high court, the justices are “now going to take this interpretation of Title IX, and I don’t see how any justice, including the liberals, can straight-faced argue that the Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX is accurate.”

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is expected to make his sentencing recommendation in former President Donald Trump’s hush money case.

The sentencing recommendation, expected to be submitted to Judge Juan Merchan on Monday, may remain under wraps until Trump’s sentencing on July 11, the New York Times reported. The former president was found guilty on all 34 felony counts, which could land him a maximum of four years in prison.

Bragg is likely to argue that Trump’s behavior during the trial should warrant time in prison. He repeatedly broke his gag order to denounce the perceived political nature of the trial, attacking jurors, prosecutors, and witnesses on 10 separate occasions.

Most experts agree that if Trump gets prison time at all, he will not be behind bars before or during the November election.

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On May 30, Trump became the first president in U.S. history to be convicted of a felony. He was found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment to pornography star Stormy Daniels.

The former president has affirmed his innocence and denied the alleged affair.

Despite the overwhelming outrage from voters across the political spectrum at President Joe Biden’s public implosion during his first 2024 presidential debate against former President Donald Trump, Democrats are legally and practically stuck with their incumbent, which is likely by design. The president, who would require only a simple majority of the party delegates to secure the nomination, has already earned 99% of those delegates thanks to a primary season that involves canceled state elections and a top-down media blackout of possible primary challengers.

Even if the party secretly planned to oust Biden after he received the nomination, when the Democratic National Committee has more legal sway over delegates, the $180 million war chest raised by Biden could only go to one other person in the country: Vice President Kamala Harris who polls as poorly as he does.

Even so, the Biden family syndicate is understandably in crisis mode. Thanks to its powerful and connected patriarch, the Biden family name has been the meal ticket for most of Biden’s siblings, all his surviving children, and six of his seven grandchildren.

“One of the strongest voices imploring Mr. Biden to resist pressure to drop out was his son Hunter Biden, whom the president has long leaned on for advice, said one of the people informed about the discussions, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to share internal deliberations,” the New York Times reported. “Hunter Biden wants Americans to see the version of his father that he knows — scrappy and in command of the facts — rather than the stumbling, aging president Americans saw on Thursday night.”

More than any other family member, Hunter Biden has the most perverse incentives to push his octogenarian patron into a second term in the presidency. Hunter Biden has already been convicted on three counts of federal gun crimes, and he heads to a second trial over criminal charges related to his tax evasion. Hunter Biden is banking on a pardon and the persisting power of the Biden moniker to keep any further investigation into whether he violated sex trafficking or foreign agent registration crimes during his overseas influence peddling and solicitation of prostitution.

But perverse incentives aside, the real revelation in the outlet’s report is that the leader of the free world is relying on the advice, not of the Obamas, faith leaders, or medical professionals, but rather a literal crack addict who:

• Is a convicted felon because his sister-in-law, with whom he cheated on his wife, threw out the firearm he illegally purchased in a public dumpster
• Owes millions in alimony and child support to the various mothers of his children
• Has never met one of his five children

The first point more or less speaks for itself. The indigo-blue jury pool of likely lifelong Joe Biden voters unanimously convicted Hunter Biden of three gun felonies after his various mistresses confirmed he was actively using crack at the time he illegally purchased the gun in question.

While Hunter Biden’s lawyer and sugar daddy, Kevin Morris, has paid back millions Hunter Biden owed to the IRS. The first son’s financial obligations to the women he used and discarded are still outstanding. Hunter Biden was famously taken to court by ex-paramour Lunden Roberts to prove his paternity of daughter Navy Joan, after which he retaliated by blocking the little girl from using the Biden moniker and reducing his child support payments to an undisclosed amount. To this day, Hunter Biden still reportedly owes Kathleen Buhle, his first wife of a quarter-century and mother to his three eldest children, nearly $3 million in court-ordered alimony.

Roberts, whose tell-all about her relationship with Hunter Biden hits bookshelves the week of the Democratic National Convention, has revealed that Navy Joan has never met her father in person, let alone the paternal grandparents who pride themselves as patriarch and matriarch of a devoutly Catholic dynasty.

Joe Biden can and should shoot a text to former President Barack Obama or someone who has actually won an election before, but his crack addict, deadbeat father, criminal of a son is probably better off seen rather than heard.

A new poll released over the weekend shows former President Trump holding a four-point lead over President Biden in Michigan. 

The EPIC-MRA poll, released Saturday, shows that in a matchup between Trump and Biden, 49% of survey respondents said they would vote for the Republican and 45% said they would vote for the Democrat. 

The survey, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4%, was conducted between June 21 and June 26, days before Biden’s widely criticized debate performance.

Favorability for Trump and Biden dipped slightly when third-party candidates were factored in. Trump dropped to 41% and Biden to 38%.

CNN’S DANA BASH REVEALS BIDEN ‘WAR ROOM’ MAY URGE PRESIDENT TO DROP OUT IF POLLING CRATERS: ‘SO DESPERATE’

Among the 600 participants in the survey, 42% identified as Democrats, 42% identified as Republicans and 13% identified as independents. 

PRESSURE MOUNTS ON BATTLEGROUND STATE DEMS AFTER BIDEN DEBATE DISASTER

The poll was released over the weekend. It was overshadowed by Thursday’s presidential debate that had even die-hard Biden supporters panicking over the president’s ability to beat Trump in November. 

Many have called for Biden to step aside, though there is no indication that he is willing to do so.

Flash polls from CNN and Ipsos on Friday called Trump the clear victor of the debate.

Fox News’ Rémy Numa contributed to this report.

In their dissents from the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity, the court’s liberal justices suggested that the majority opinion allows for a slew of alarming scenarios — including a president ordering a Navy SEAL team to “assassinate” his political rival or even poisoning one of his own cabinet members.

The high court on Monday ruled 6-3 that a president has substantial immunity for official acts that occurred during his time in office. It’s a decision that has significant implications for former President Trump, whose prosecution on charges related to the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol breach and alleged 2020 election interference spurred the Supreme Court to hear the case. 

But although the majority opinion from Chief Justice John Roberts explicitly stated that the president “is not above the law” and immunity is only a factor when it involves an “official act” — the justices sent the case back to lower courts to determine if the acts at the center of Trump’s case were “official” — the ruling raised a series of frightening possibilities, according to the trio of dissenting justices.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elana Kagan wrote in the primary dissent that the court’s majority opinion “makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law.” 

TRUMP IMMUNITY CASE: SUPREME COURT RULES EX-PRESIDENTS HAVE SUBSTANTIAL PROTECTION FROM PROSECUTION

“The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution,” Sotomayor wrote. “Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.”

She continued: “Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today.”

Sotomayor added that the majority decision has “shifted irrevocably” the relationship between the president and the American people, being that “in every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”

BIDEN CAMP DISMISSES TRUMP IMMUNITY RULING: ‘DOESN’T CHANGE THE FACTS’

Yet another startling scenario is included in a footnote from a separate dissent authored by Jackson.

Noting that the president’s removal of a cabinet member would constitute an official act, Jackson says that “while the President may have the authority to decide to remove the Attorney General, for example, the question here is whether the President has the option to remove the Attorney General by, say, poisoning him to death.”

She adds: “Put another way, the issue here is not whether the President has exclusive removal power, but whether a generally applicable criminal law prohibiting murder can restrict how the President exercises that authority.”

Sotomayor’s conclusion summed up the prevailing tenor of her and Jackson’s writings: “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”

Both dissents were taken to task in the court’s majority opinion.

“As for the dissents, they strike a tone of chilling doom that is wholly disproportionate to what the Court actually does today…,” Roberts wrote.

He added: “Coming up short on reasoning, the dissents repeatedly level variations of the accusation that the Court has rendered the President ‘above the law.’”

TRUMP TOUTS SUPREME COURT’S PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY RULING AS ‘BIG WIN FOR OUR CONSTITUTION AND FOR DEMOCRACY’

Adding that the dissents came “up short on reasoning,” Roberts wrote that the “positions in the end boil down to ignoring the Constitution’s separation of powers and the Court’s precedent and instead fear mongering on the basis of extreme hypotheticals about a future where the President ‘feels empowered to violate federal criminal law.'”

Sotomayor’s dissent swiftly reverberated throughout social media. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in the 2016 election, posted on X that she agrees with Sotomayor’s stand against the “MAGA wing” of the high court. 

“It will be up to the American people this November to hold Donald Trump accountable,” Clinton wrote.

The Democratic National Committee is considering formally nominating President Biden as early as mid-July, two Democratic sources confirm to Fox News.

A potential date for Biden’s nomination is July 21, which is when the Democratic National Convention’s credentials committee meets virtually.

As has been reported for weeks, Democratic Party officials decided that the formal roll call would not take place at their convention, which kicks off on August 19th in Chicago. 

BIDEN TRIES TO FLIP THE SCRIPT ON THE NEGATIVE NARRATIVE COMING OUT OF THE DEBATE

The reason is that the Democrats’ convention comes after Ohio’s ballot deadline of August 7th. Party officials, in a maneuver to allow Biden to appear on the Ohio ballot, said they would hold the roll call ahead of Ohio’s ballot deadline.

But the latest development on a potential July 21 roll call date also comes in the wake of last Thursday’s disastrous debate performance by the president in his first face-to-face showdown with former President Trump.

The 81-year-old president’s halting delivery and stumbling answers at the debate sparked widespread panic in the Democratic Party and spurred calls from political pundits, editorial writers, and some party politicians and donors, for Biden to step aside as the party’s standard-bearer. 

Word of the potential July 21 roll wall was first reported by Bloomberg News.

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is headed to New Hampshire this week to headline a Democrat campaign event just days after the Biden-Trump presidential debate, fueling more speculation that he may be preparing to step in if Biden backs out of the 2024 race. 

The event, called the “Blue Summer Campaign Kick-Off,” will be spearheaded by the New Hampshire Senate Democratic Caucus on July 8.

“I will never turn my back on President Biden,” Newsom told reporters in the spin room following Thursday night’s debate, appearing to dispel rumors that he’s running a shadow campaign. “I don’t know a Democrat in my party that would do so. And especially after tonight, we have his back.”

Newsom assured reporters that he was not going to turn his back on Biden — who has faced significant criticisms and conerns over his mental acuity — and was confident he was fit to be the country’s leader.

FIRST 2024 TRUMP-BIDEN PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE: TOP CLASHES OVER ISSUES FROM THE BORDER TO UKRAINE

“I spent a lot of time with him. I know Joe Biden. I know what he’s accomplished in the last three and a half years. I know what he’s capable of. And I have no trepidations,” Newsom said.

Leading up to the debate, rumors continued to swirl that Newsom, a possible candidate for president in 2028, had been tapped as a Biden surrogate leading up to the November presidential election.

When pressed if he was “ready to take on Donald Trump,” hinting that he could be a potential replacement for Biden, Newsom again denied the rumors and gave his full support to the president.

Last year, Biden told a group of world leaders that California Gov. Gavin Newsom “could have the job I’m looking for” if he wanted, amid a low approval rating and discontent within his own party.

FETTERMAN HITS NEWSOM FOR NOT HAVING ‘GUTS’ TO ADMIT HE’S RUNNING SHADOW CAMPAIGN AGAINST BIDEN

“I want to talk about Governor Newsom. I want to thank him. He’s been one hell of a governor, man,” Biden said during a welcome reception for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders in San Francisco. “Matter of fact, he could be anything he wants. He could have the job I’m looking for.”

Biden’s eyebrow-raising comment was made at “the most significant event with world leaders in San Francisco in recent history,” according to the APEC 2023 website for the event.

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., also accused Newsom of running a shadow campaign for the presidency last year, roughly around the same time that Newsom debated against Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis hosted by Fox News’ Sean Hannity. 

“Let me say something that might be uncomfortable,” Fetterman said at a Democratic Party dinner in Iowa. “Right now there are two additional Democrats running for Pennsylvania, excuse me, running for president right now. One, one is a congressman from Minnesota. The other one is the governor of California. They’re both running for president, but only one had the guts to announce it.”

A RASPY BIDEN GETS OFF TO A HALTING START AGAINST TRUMP IN THE FIRST 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION DEBATE

Biden so far has not signaled he will drop out of the race. 

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

Fox News Digital’s Stepheny Price, Aubrie Spady and Cameron Cawthorne contributed to this report.