Key events
Robert Tait
History may record them as eight days that sunk a presidency, or at least the rockiest road to a convention in living memory – a week that has left Joe Biden’s re-election bid hanging by a thread.
Here’s a timeline:
Jessica Glenza
On Friday, high-profile neurosurgeon Dr Sanjay Gupta called on Biden to undergo neurological testing and release the results to the public, saying he and other brain specialists believe a detailed cognitive exam is warranted.
“From a neurological standpoint, we were concerned with his confused rambling; sudden loss of concentration in the middle of a sentence; halting speech and absence of facial animation, resulting at times in a flat, open-mouthed expression,” Gupta wrote for CNN.
Gupta qualified that his suggestion was based on “only observations, not in any way diagnostic of something deeper”. He continued that “the president should be encouraged to undergo detailed cognitive and movement disorder testing, and those results should be made available to the public”.
One of the things Biden will have been hoping to get out of the ABC interview is stemming the flow of top Democratic donors from deserting him, write The Guardian’s Jonathan Yerushalmy and Callum Jones:
On Friday, media tycoon Barry Diller, when asked by the Ankler if he and his wife, the designer Diane von Fürstenberg, were holding firm with Biden’s campaign, he replied: “No.”
Diller, previously a key financial backer of Hillary Clinton’s ill-fated 2016 campaign, has already donated more than $100,000 to Biden and the Democrats this time around.
Diller followed Abigail Disney – the heir to the Disney family fortune and a major party donor – who said on Thursday she would withhold donations unless Biden dropped out of the race.
And earlier in the week Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings joined calls for Biden to take himself out of the presidential race. Screenwriter Damon Lindelof, who has been a significant contributor to the party, proposed on Wednesday a “DEMbargo”, withholding funding until Biden stands aside.
Biden defiant as he fights for his political life
Good morning,
Joe Biden is still fighting for his political life. On Friday, the president was defiant in a make-or-break TV interview on ABC, insisting that only “the Lord almighty” could persuade him to exit the US presidential race.
At a rally in Wisconsin, also on Friday, Biden again insisted he wasn’t going anywhere, and dismissed concerns about his age. “We’ve also noticed a lot of discussion about my age,” said Biden. “Let me say something. I wasn’t too old to create over 50m new jobs.”
It remains unclear whether all this will be enough to assuage Democratic lawmakers, donors and voters who are calling on him to step down after a disastrous performance at the first presidential debate and a series of gaffes and news reports that have called into question his fitness to serve another term. The coming days, during which Biden has a packed schedule of rallies in swing states, will be crucial to his re-election bid.
Follow along here for the latest developments.
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Here are key takeaways from the high-stakes ABC TV interview.
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Pressed by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on what he would do if friends and supporters expressed concern that his candidacy would cost Democrats the House of Representatives and Senate, Biden replied: “I’m not going to answer that question. It’s not going to happen.”
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Millions are pinning their hopes on the Democratic party as the last wall of defence against Donald Trump’s threat of an “imperial presidency”, The Guardian’s Washington DC bureau chief David Smith writes. Instead the Democratic party is offering 81-year-old Joe Biden and an internal civil war.