Joe Biden vowed to beat Donald Trump “in 2020” as he pledged to stay in the presidential race and fight to save hisre-election bid.
The US President committed his latest gaffe at a rally in Wisconsin, in the first of a handful of campaignappearances that he has reportedly conceded will decide whether he can stay in the race.
“I’ll beat Donald Trump. I’ll beat him again in 2020,” Mr Biden told supporters in the battleground state.
It comes after the 81-year-old, attempting to recover from his disastrous debate performance last week, said he was proud to be the first “black woman” elected president.
On Friday night Maura Healey, the governor of Massachusetts, became the most high-profile sitting Democrat to publicly call for Mr Biden to consider his position.
“The best way forward right now is a decision for the President to make,” she said.
“Over the coming days, I urge him to listen to the American people and carefully evaluate whether he remains our best hope to defeat Donald Trump.”
But at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, Mr Biden gave a forceful speech declaring he would not stand down.
“I’m staying in this race,” he told a crowd of supporters. “I’m not letting one 90-minute debate wipe out three-and-a-half years of work.”
At the same rally, he mistakenly told a crowd he would beat Trump “in 2020” and confused billions with trillions in a criticism of Trump’s alleged tax cuts.
His gaffe about black women was made during an with Philadelphia’s WURD radio station, when Mr Biden appeared to mix up himself with Kamala Harris, his vice president.
“By the way, I’m proud to be, as I said, the first vice president, first black woman...to serve with a black president,” he said, in what appeared to be a reference to both his own term as vice president under Barack Obama and Ms Harris’s appointment to the office in 2021.
Both Mr Obama and Ms Harris made history when they were elected in 2008 and 2020 respectively, as the first black president and first black vice president.
Mr Biden may not even be wholly in charge of which policies the White House puts through, a source from “inside the building” told Semafor news website yesterday.
The source said much appeared to be handled by his close team including chief of staff Jeff Zients. The White House denied the claim.
Hopes for interview
Mr Biden’s speech gaffe came ahead of a major interview with ABC News which White House aides hope will extinguish calls from some Democrats for Mr Biden to step back from the 2024 race.
Donors, strategists and some congressmen have argued that Mr Biden is too old to serve a second term, and that his frequent errors in public appearances risk handing the election to Donald Trump.
The pressure has threatened to end his campaign since late last month, when Mr Biden gave a disastrous performance in a televised presidential debate with Trump in Atlanta.
Aides suggested to The New York Times that Mr Biden will attempt to reboot his campaign with the interview and two campaign rallies over the weekend, although some in his own party remain sceptical the situation can be recovered.
In Thursday’s interview, when asked why voting mattered, Mr Biden delivered an apparently unrelated answer that referred to the Supreme Court’s recent decision to grant Trump considerable immunity to prosecution.
“You need someone, someone who is going to make sure that…the Supreme Court just issued a decision, by the way, that threatens the American principle that we have no kings in America,” he said.
Earlier in the day, he fluffed his lines when speaking to military families on the White House South Lawn. During a four-minute address he said he was “not going anywhere” but he seemed to stumble when he referred to Mr Trump as “one of our colleagues”.
Damaging revelations
While defenders of Mr Biden say he has long mixed up words, during his 90-minute debate last week he frequently appeared lost.
Further damaging revelations about his mental capacity have since emerged in the US media, including the suggestion that he is not cogent after 4pm each day, and that he sometimes forgets the names of close friends.
A guest at a party attended by Mr Biden told New York Magazine they were shocked to find he could not make it through an evening reception because it was too late.
Other long-time friends of Mr Biden told the publication he struggled to remember their names when they met.
While he has admitted to supporters he does not speak as “smoothly” as he used to, Mr Biden blamed his poor debate performance on a hectic international travel schedule in the weeks leading up to the event.
Polls show public support for Mr Biden has dropped markedly since the debate, while trust in Ms Harris has grown, leading to speculation that he will stand down and hand her the nomination.
