MADISON, Wisconsin: President Joe Biden, fighting to save his endangered reelection effort, used a highly anticipated TV interview Friday to repeatedly reject taking an independent medical evaluation that would show voters he is up for serving another term in office while blaming his disastrous debate performance on a “bad episode” and saying there were “no indications of any serious condition.”
“Look, I have a cognitive test every single day,” Biden told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, referring to the tasks he faces daily in a rigorous job. “Every day, I’ve had tests. Everything I do.”
Biden made it through the 22-minute interview without any major blunders that would inflict further damage to his imperiled candidacy, but it appeared unlikely to fully tamp down concerns about his age and fitness for another four years and his ability to defeat Donald Trump in November.
It left Biden in a standoff against a not-insignificant faction of his party with four months to go until Election Day, and with just weeks until the Democratic National Convention. The drawn-out spectacle could benefit Biden’s efforts to remain in the race by limiting the party’s options to replace him. But it also could be a distraction from vital efforts to frame the 2024 race as a referendum on Trump.
During the interview, Biden insisted he was not more frail than he was in 2020. He said he undergoes “ongoing assessment” by his personal doctors and they “don’t hesitate to tell me” if something is wrong.
“Can I run the 100 in 10 flat? No. But I’m still in good shape,” Biden said.
As for the debate, “I didn’t listen to my instincts in terms of preparing,” Biden said.
Biden suggested that Trump’s disruptions — while standing just a few feet from him — had flustered him: “I realized that, even when I was answering a question and they turned his mic off, he was still shouting and I let it distract me. I’m not blaming it on that. But I realized that I just wasn’t in control.”
Asked how he might turn the race around, Biden argued that one key would be large and energetic rallies like the one he held Friday in Wisconsin. When pressed that Trump routinely draws larger crowds, the president laid into his opponent.
“Trump is a pathological lair,” Biden said, accusing Trump of bungling the federal response to the COVID pandemic and failing to create jobs. “You ever see something that Trump did that benefited someone else and not him?”
Biden also insisted he was the “most qualified” to lead Democrats against Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
The interview, paired with a weekend campaign in battleground Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, was part of Biden’s rigorous effort to course correct from his debate performance last week. But internal party frustrations continued to fester, with one influential Democratic senator working on a nascent push that would encourage the president to exit the race and Democrats quietly chatting about where they would go next if the president drops out — or what it would mean if he stays in.
“It’s President Biden’s decision whether or not he remains in the race. Voters select our nominee and they chose him,” said California Rep. Ro Khanna, a member of the Biden campaign’s national advisory board that works as a gathering of his top surrogates. “Now, he needs to prove to those voters that he is up to the job and that will require more than just this one interview.”
Still, in Wisconsin, Biden was focused on proving his capacity to remain as president. When asked whether he would halt his campaign, he told reporters he was “completely ruling that out” and said he is “positive” he could serve for another four years. At a rally in front of hundreds of supporters he acknowledged his subpar debate performance but insisted, “I am running, and I’m going to win again.”
“I beat Donald Trump,” a forceful Biden said, as the crowd gathered in a local middle school cheered and waved campaign signs. “I will beat him again.”
Biden, relying on a teleprompter for his remarks, attacked his presumptive Republican challenger almost immediately, laying into Trump by pointing out that the former president once said that “George Washington’s army won the revolution by taking control of the airports from the British.”
Amid laughter, Biden continued, “Talk about me misspeaking.”
In his speech, Biden tried to flip the questions swirling about his age, asking the crowd whether he was “too old” to have passed gun legislation, created jobs and helped ease student loan debt — while suggesting he’d do more in a second presidential term.
The interview with ABC could be a watershed moment for Biden, who is under pressure to bow out of the campaign after his rocky debate performance against Trump ignited concern that the 81-year-old Democrat is not up for the job for another four years.
While private angst among Democratic lawmakers, donors and strategists is running deep, most in the party have held public fire as they wait to see if the president can restore confidence with his weekend travel and his handling of the interview.
To that end, Sen. Mark Warner reached out to fellow senators throughout this week to discuss whether to ask Biden to exit the race, according to three people familiar with the effort who requested anonymity to talk about private conversations. The Virginia Democrat’s moves are notable given his chairmanship of the Senate Intelligence Committee and his reputation as a lawmaker supportive of Biden who has working relationships with colleagues in both parties. Warner’s effort was first reported by The Washington Post.
The strategy remains fluid. One of the people with knowledge of Warner’s effort said there are enough Senate Democrats concerned enough about Biden’s capacity to run for reelection to take some sort of action, although there was yet no consensus on what that plan would be. Some of the Democratic senators could meet as soon as Monday on how to move forward.
The top Democrats on House committees are planning to meet virtually Sunday to discuss the situation, according to a person familiar with the gathering granted anonymity to talk about it.
Meanwhile, at least four House Democrats have called for Biden to step down as the nominee, with Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois joining Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, Texas Rep. Lloyd Doggett and Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva in pushing for an alternative. While not going that far, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said in a carefully worded statement Friday that Biden now has a decision to make on “the best way forward.”
“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,” Healey said.
There were also a few signs of discontent at Biden’s campaign rally Friday, with one supporter onstage waving a sign that read “Pass the torch Joe” as the president came out. His motorcade was also greeted at the middle school by a few people urging him to move on.
But others were pleased. Rebecca Green, a 52-year-old environmental scientist from Madison, said she found Biden’s energy reassuring. “We were just waiting for him to come out strong and fighting again, the way we know he is,” she said.
Many Democratic lawmakers, who are hearing from constituents at home during the holiday week, are deeply frustrated yet split on whether Biden should stay or go. Privately, discussions among the House Democrats flared this week as word spread that some of them were drafting public letters suggesting the president should quit the race.
Yet pushback from other House Democrats was fierce.
“Any ‘leader’ signing a letter calling for President Biden to drop out needs to get their priorities straight and stop undermining this incredible actual leader who has delivered real results for our country,” said Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., an influential member of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Biden appears to have pulled his family closer while attempting to prove that he’s still the Democrats’ best option for competing in November’s election.
The ubiquitous presence of Hunter Biden in the West Wing since the debate has become an uncomfortable dynamic for many staffers, according to two Democrats close to the White House who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.
For many staffers, the sight of Hunter Biden, just weeks after his conviction on felony gun charges, taking a larger role in advising his father has been unsettling and a questionable choice, they said.
Biden’s reelection campaign is pushing ahead with aggressive plans despite the uncertainty. It plans to pair his in-person events with a fresh $50 million ad campaign this month meant to capitalize on high viewership moments like the Summer Olympics that begin in Paris on July 26.
Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, first lady Jill Biden and second gentleman Doug Emhoff are scheduled to travel to every battleground state this month, with Biden in Pennsylvania on Sunday. In a memo released Friday, the campaign also emphasized that Biden would participate in “frequent off-the-cuff moments” –- once a hallmark of the gregarious, glad-handling politician’s career that have dwindled throughout his presidency.
For Biden, every moment now is critical to restoring the lost confidence stemming from his shaky performance in Atlanta last week. Yet the president continued to make slipups that did not help that effort.
In a hastily organized gathering with more than 20 Democratic governors Wednesday evening, Biden acknowledged he needs to sleep more and limit evening events so he can be rested for the job, according to three people granted anonymity to speak about the private meeting.
In trying to explain away those comments, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stressed that Biden “works around the clock” but that he “also recognizes the importance of striking a balance and taking care of himself.”
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who attended the meeting, said Biden “certainly engaged with us on complicated matters.”
“But then again, this is something that he needs to not just reassure Democratic governors on, but he needs to reassure the American people,” Beshear said.
Biden says ‘staying in the race’ as he scrambles to save candidacy, braces for ABC interview
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Biden says ‘staying in the race’ as he scrambles to save candidacy, braces for ABC interview
- In front of roughly 300 supporters at a Wisconsin middle school, Biden again acknowledged his subpar debate last week
- Interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos expected to be intensive and probing
India’s leader Modi touted all was well in Kashmir. A massacre of tourists shattered that claim
- The attack outraged people in Kashmir and India, where it led to calls of swift action against Pakistan
SRINAGAR, India: Hundreds of Indian tourists, families and honeymooners, drawn by the breathtaking Himalayan beauty, were enjoying a picture-perfect meadow in Kashmir. They didn’t know gunmen in army fatigues were lurking in the woods.
When the attackers got their chance, they shot mostly Indian Hindu men, many of them at close-range, leaving behind bodies strewn across the Baisaran meadow and survivors screaming for help.
The gunmen quickly vanished into thick forests. By the time Indian authorities arrived, 26 people were dead and 17 others were wounded.
India has described the April 22 massacre as a terror attack and blamed Pakistan for backing it, an accusation denied by Islamabad. India swiftly announced diplomatic actions against its archrival Pakistan, which responded with its own tit-for-tat measures.
The assailants are still on the run, as calls in India for military action against Pakistan are growing.
World leaders have been scrambling to de-escalate the tensions between two nuclear-armed neighbors, which have historically relied on third countries for conflict management.
But the massacre has also touched a raw nerve.
Early on Wednesday, India fired missiles that struck at least three locations inside Pakistani-controlled territory, according to Pakistani security officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. India said it was striking infrastructure used by militants.
India admits security lapse
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration has governed Kashmir with an iron fist in recent years, claiming militancy in the region was in check and a tourism influx was a sign of normalcy returning.
Those claims now lie shattered.
Security experts and former intelligence and senior military officers who have served in the region say Modi’s government — riding on a nationalistic fervor over Kashmir to please its supporters — missed warning signs.
The government acknowledged that in a rare admission.
Two days after the attack, Kiren Rijiju, India’s parliamentary affairs minister, said that a crucial all-party meeting discussed “where the lapses occurred.”
“We totally missed ... the intentions of our hostile neighbor,” said Avinash Mohananey, a former Indian intelligence officer who has operated in Kashmir and Pakistan.
The meadow, near the resort town of Pahalgam, can be reached by trekking or pony rides, and visitors cross at least three security camps and a police station to reach there. According to Indian media, there was no security presence for more than 1,000 tourists that day.
Pahalgam serves as a base for an annual Hindu pilgrimage that draws hundreds of thousands of people from across India. The area is ringed by thick woods that connect with forest ranges in the Jammu area, where Indian troops have faced attacks by rebels in recent years after fighting ebbed in the Kashmir Valley, the heart of an anti-India rebellion.
The massacre brought Modi’s administration almost back to where it started when a suicide car bombing in the region in 2019 prompted his government to strip Kashmir of its semi-autonomy and bring it under direct federal rule. Tensions have simmered ever since, but the region has also drawn millions of visitors amid a strange calm enforced by an intensified security crackdown.
“We probably started buying our own narrative that things were normal in Kashmir,” Mohananey said.
In the past, insurgents have carried out brazen attacks and targeted Hindu pilgrims, Indian Hindu as well as Muslim immigrant workers, and local Hindus and Sikhs. However, this time a large number of tourists were attacked, making it one of the worst massacres involving civilians in recent years.
The attack outraged people in Kashmir and India, where it led to calls of swift action against Pakistan.
Indian television news channels amplified these demands and panelists argued that India should invade Pakistan. Modi and his senior ministers vowed to hunt down the attackers and their backers.
Experts say much of the public pressure on the Indian government to act militarily against Pakistan falls within the pattern of long, simmering animosity between both countries.
“All the talk of military options against Pakistan mainly happens in echo chambers and feeds a nationalist narrative,” in India, New Delhi-based counterterrorism expert Ajai Sahni said.
“It doesn’t matter what will be done. We will be told it was done and was a success,” he said. “And it will be celebrated nonetheless.”
Modi’s optimism misplaced, experts say
Experts also say that the Modi government’s optimism was also largely misplaced and that its continuous boasting of rising tourism in the region was a fragile barometer of normalcy. Last year, Omar Abdullah, Kashmir’s top elected official, cautioned against such optimism.
“By this attack, Pakistan wants to convey that there is no normalcy in Kashmir and that tourism is no indicator for it. They want to internationalize the issue,” said D.S. Hooda, former military commander for northern India between 2014 to 2016.
Hooda said the “choice of targets and the manner in which the attack was carried out indicates that it was well-planned.”
“If there would have been a good security cover, maybe this incident would not have happened,” he said.
India sees Pakistan connection to the attack
Indian security experts believe the attack could be a retaliation for a passenger train hijacking in Pakistan in March by Baloch insurgents. Islamabad accused New Delhi of orchestrating the attack in which 25 people were killed. India denies it.
Mohananey said that Indian authorities should have taken the accusations seriously and beefed-up security in Kashmir, while arguing there was a striking similarity in both attacks since only men were targeted.
“It was unusual that women and children were spared” in both cases, Mohananey said.
Two senior police officers, who have years of counterinsurgency experience in Kashmir, said after the train attack in Pakistan that they were anticipating some kind of reaction in the region by militants.
The officers, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that security officials perceived the threat of an imminent attack, and Modi’s inauguration of a strategic rail line in the region was canceled. A large-scale attack on tourists, however, wasn’t anticipated, because there was no such precedence, the officers said.
Hooda, who commanded what New Delhi called “surgical strikes” against militants in the Pakistan-controlled part of Kashmir in 2016, said that the attack has deepened thinking that it was time to tackle the Pakistani state, not just militants.
Such calculus could be a marked shift. In 2016 and 2019, India said that its army struck militant infrastructure inside Pakistan after two major militant attacks against its soldiers.
“After this attack,” Hooda said, India wants to stop Pakistan “from using terrorism as an instrument of state policy.”
“We need to tighten our security and plug lapses, but the fountainhead of terrorism needs to be tackled,” Hooda said. “The fountainhead is Pakistan.”
Trump says only 21 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza now believed to be alive
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said Tuesday that three hostages held by Hamas in Gaza have died, leaving only 21 believed to be still living.
“As of today, it’s 21, three have died,” Trump said of the hostages being held by Hamas, noting until recently it had been 24 people believed to be living. He did not elaborate on the identities of those now believed to be dead, nor how he had come to learn of their deaths. “There’s 21, plus a lot of dead bodies,” Trump said.
One American, Edan Alexander, had been among the 24 hostages believed to be alive, with the bodies of several other Americans also held by Hamas after its Oct. 7, 2023 assault on Israel.
The president’s comments came as Israel approved plans on Monday to seize the Gaza Strip and to stay in the Palestinian territory for an unspecified amount of time, in a bid to recover the hostages and try to fulfill its war aims of destroying Hamas. If implemented, the move would vastly expand Israel’s operations there and likely draw fierce international opposition.
Columbia University lays off nearly 180 after Trump pulled $400M over his antisemitism concerns
- Pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up an encampment and seized a campus building in April, leading to dozens of arrests and inspiring a wave of similar protests nationally
NEW YORK: Columbia University said Tuesday that it will be laying off nearly 180 staffers in response to President Donald Trump’s decision to cancel $400 million in funding over the Manhattan college’s handling of student protests against the war in Gaza.
Those receiving non-renewal or termination notices Tuesday represent about 20 percent of the employees funded in some manner by the terminated federal grants, the university said in a statement Tuesday.
“We have had to make deliberate, considered decisions about the allocation of our financial resources,” the university said. “Those decisions also impact our greatest resource, our people. We understand this news will be hard.”
Officials are working with the Trump administration in the hopes of getting the funding restored, they said, but the university will still pull back spending because of uncertainty and strain on its budget.
Officials said the university will be scaling back research, with some departments winding down activities and others maintaining some level of research while pursuing alternate funding.
In March, the Trump administration pulled the funding over what it described as the Ivy League school’s failure to squelch antisemitism on campus during the Israel-Hamas war that began in October 2023.
Within weeks, Columbia capitulated to a series of demands laid out by the Republican administration as a starting point for restoring the funding.
Among the requirements was overhauling the university’s student disciplinary process, banning campus protesters from wearing masks, barring demonstrations from academic buildings, adopting a new definition of antisemitism and putting the Middle Eastern studies program under the supervision of a vice provost who would have a say over curriculum and hiring.
After Columbia announced the changes, US Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the university was ” on the right track,” but declined to say when or if Columbia’s funding would be restored. Spokespersons for the federal education department didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday.
Columbia was at the forefront of US campus protests over the war last spring. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up an encampment and seized a campus building in April, leading to dozens of arrests and inspiring a wave of similar protests nationally.
Trump, when he retook the White House in January, moved swiftly to cut federal money to colleges and universities he viewed as too tolerant of antisemitism.
Trump hopes India-Pakistan clashes end ‘very quickly’
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said Tuesday he hoped clashes between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan end “very quickly,” after New Delhi’s forces launched strikes and Islamabad vowed retaliation.
“It’s a shame, we just heard about it,” Trump said at the White House, after the Indian government said it had hit “terrorist camps” on its western neighbor’s territory following a deadly attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir.
“I guess people knew something was going to happen based on the past. They’ve been fighting for many, many decades and centuries, actually, if you really think about it,” he added.
India and Pakistan have fought three full-scale wars since gaining independence from the British in 1947. Both claim Kashmir in full but administer separate portions of the disputed region.
“I just hope it ends very quickly,” said Trump.
India had been widely expected to respond militarily since gunmen shot dead 26 people in Indian-administered Kashmir, mostly Hindus.
New Delhi has blamed militants that it has said were from Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba, a UN-designated terrorist organization.
Pakistan’s army said the Indian strikes targeted three sites in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and two in Punjab province, the country’s most populous.
Islamabad said that three civilians, including a child, had been killed in Indian strikes.
The Indian strikes came just hours after the US State Department issued a fresh call for calm.
“We continue to urge Pakistan and India to work toward a responsible resolution that maintains long-term peace and regional stability in South Asia,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters.
Her statement came after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned of stopping water from flowing across borders following the Kashmir attack.
UN chief concerned about Indian military actions in Pakistan, urges restraint
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was very concerned about Indian attacks in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, his spokesperson said on Tuesday while calling for maximum military restraint from both nuclear-armed Asian neighbors.
Guterres said earlier this week even before India’s military actions that tensions between India and Pakistan were “at their highest in years” after an April 22 Islamist militant attack in India-administered Kashmir in which 26 people were killed and which the UN chief condemned as an “awful terror attack.”
India attacked Pakistan and Pakistani Kashmir on Wednesday Asia time and late Tuesday US time, while Pakistan said it had shot down some Indian fighter jets in the worst fighting in more than two decades between the countries.
“The Secretary-General is very concerned about the Indian military operations across the Line of Control and international border. He calls for maximum military restraint from both countries,” the UN chief’s spokesperson said on Tuesday.
“The world cannot afford a military confrontation between India and Pakistan.”
“Tensions between India and Pakistan are at their highest in years. I strongly condemn the awful terror attack in Pahalgam on 22 April. It is essential — especially at this critical hour — that India and Pakistan avoid a military confrontation that could easily spin out of control,” Guterres said on Monday.
Late last month, Guterres spoke separately with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shebaz Sharif and India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and offered to support de-escalation efforts, his spokesperson said.
Muslim-majority Kashmir is claimed in full by both Hindu-majority India and Islamic Pakistan, with each controlling only part of it and having fought wars over it.
