Combative Biden refuses to quit 2024 race, dismisses polls and mental acuity questions
President Biden repeatedly refused to reconsider his bid for re-election, time and again dismissing the concerns of those trying to pressure him to quit the 2024 White House race due to lagging poll numbers and concerns about his mental acuity during a high-stakes interview Friday.
Biden’s 22-minute sit-down with ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos was taped earlier in the day but aired unedited. It was the 81-year-old president’s first televised sit-down since his debate against former President Trump last week.
At one point, Stephanopoulos informed Biden he was behind in the popular vote, and the president replied, “I don’t buy that.”
“I don’t think anybody is more qualified to be president or win this race than me,” Biden said when pressed about a race his opponent appears favored to win.
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When asked if he had the mental acuity to be president another four years, Biden said, “I wouldn’t be running if I didn’t think I did.”
Biden also brushed off concerns about his mental fitness for office. When asked if he was being “honest” with himself about his own cognitive abilities, the president replied, “Yes, I am, because, George, last thing I want to do is not be able to meet that.”
But he was also evasive when asked about the possibility of taking a cognitive test and making those results public, something Biden’s Republican critics have long demanded.
“Look, I have a cognitive test every single day. Every day I have a test. Everything I do,” Biden said. “You know, not only am I campaigning, I’m running the world. And that’s not — it sounds like hyperbole. But we are the essential nation in the world.”
When pressed again, Biden said, “I’ve already done it,” though he did not elaborate.
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Biden’s allies and critics were expected to be closely watching the interview after last month’s CNN debate raised lingering concerns about his viability as a candidate.
The president delivered a poor performance against his Republican rival, speaking with a hoarse voice he attributed to a cold and also frequently trailing off while speaking, appearing to lose his train of thought.
On Friday, Biden insisted he had a “bad night” during the debate.
“I think the most charitable thing you can say about it is it’s way too little, too late,” Democratic strategist Julian Epstein, former chief counsel for Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, told Fox News Digital after the interview aired.
“The president looks frail. He looks foggy. He looks weak. He looks like he is using every last ounce of energy that he may have to sort of barely get through.
“Most Democrats now, whether they’re saying it or not, realize that, you know, the Biden campaign is on death watch. And it’s a question of whether I think it will be, you know, early next week or after that.”
Biden said he blamed himself for how the debate went, but he also suggested some fault lies with Trump.
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“I was having a bad night when I realized that even when I was answering a question, even when they turned his mic off, he was still shouting, and I … I let it distract me. I’m not blaming it on that. But I realized that I just wasn’t in control,” the president said.
He also responded to questions about recent polls that show him behind Trump.
“All pollsters I talk to tell me it’s a toss-up. And when I’m behind … there’s only one poll I’m really far behind, CBS poll and NBC, I mean, excuse me,” Biden said, his last few words barely intelligible.
Stephanopoulos then said The “New York Times and NBC, both have you about six points behind in the popular vote.”
“That’s exactly right. New York Times had me behind before anything having to do with this race, had me behind ten points. Ten points they had me behind. Nothing’s changed substantially in The New York Times poll,” Biden answered.
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Toward the end of the interview, Stephanopoulos asked Biden about the growing number of Democratic lawmakers suggesting he should step aside, and Biden pushed back.
“Look, I mean, if the Lord Almighty came out and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race,’ I’ll get out of the race. The Lord Almighty’s not coming down,” the president said.
Former Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod wrote on X after the debate, “The president is rightfully proud of his record. But he is dangerously out-of-touch with the concerns people have about his capacities moving forward and his standing in this race.”
Human case of deadly medieval disease confirmed in the US, health officials say
A human case of the plague has been confirmed in Pueblo County, Colorado, according to health officials.
The Pueblo Department of Public Health and Environment (PDPHE) is working with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to investigate, according to a press release.
No specific information was provided about the person who contracted the plague.
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“We advise all individuals to protect themselves and their pets from plague,” Alicia Solis, program manager of the Office of Communicable Disease and Emergency Preparedness at PDPHE, stated in the release.
What is the plague?
The bubonic plague is caused by Yersinia pestis, a bacterium that was likely first introduced in North America around 1900 from rats on ships coming from South Asia, according to Timothy Brewer, M.D., professor of medicine and epidemiology at UCLA.
“Since its introduction 120 years ago, it has become endemic in ground squirrels and rodents in the rural Southwestern U.S.,” he told Fox News Digital.
Although the disease can affect people of all ages, half the cases involve patients between the ages of 12 and 45, as stated on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website.
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Globally, between 1,000 and 2,000 cases of plague are reported to the World Health Organization each year — although only an average of seven annual cases are in the U.S.
If left untreated, the plague has a fatality rate of 30% to 60%.
With antibiotics, that drops to below 5%.
Symptoms and spread
Symptoms of the plague typically include severe headache, fever and chills, muscle aches, nausea, vomiting and swollen lymph nodes, the health department listed.
The plague can spread by droplets from one person infected with Y. pestis to another, according to Erica Susky, a certified infection control practitioner based in Canada.
“The more common risk of exposure in the U.S. is from pets, rodents and fleas,” she told Fox News Digital.
“Pets can sometimes be infected when encountering an infected flea or rodent and may pass it along to their pet owners from a bite or if the pet is ill.”
Another possible source is from hunting, she said — “skinning animals is also a risk, as the bacterium can spread via infected body fluids.”
“Treat pets promptly if they have a flea infestation and seek veterinary treatment if a pet becomes ill.”
Breathing in dust contaminated by dried rodent urine or feces with the bacteria can also spread the infection, according to Brewer.
Preventing the plague
The best means of prevention is to avoid rodents and fleas whenever possible, including dead rodents, Susky said.
“One way to do this is to ensure the home is rodent-proof by eliminating places where rodents may enter and hide,” she told Fox News Digital.
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Whenever possible, pets should be kept indoors, Susky recommended.
If pets are outdoors, they should be leashed.
“Treat pets promptly if they have a flea infestation and seek veterinary treatment if a pet becomes ill,” Susky advised.
Hunters should wear gloves and wash their hands after skinning animals, and should change and wash their clothes afterward, she added.
The PDPHE also recommends keeping pet food in rodent-proof containers and not allowing pets to sleep in bed.
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“If spending time outdoors where one may be bitten by fleas and other insects, repellent should be applied to minimize potential bites, which are a portal of entry for the bacterium if one is bitten by an infected flea,” Susky said.
Anyone who develops symptoms of plague should see a health care provider immediately, Solis advised in the PDPHE alert.
“Plague can be treated successfully with antibiotics, but an infected person must be treated promptly to avoid serious complications or death.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the Pueblo Department of Public Health and Environment and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment for comment.
Two questions the reporters who cover Biden every day need to answer
What did reporters who cover the White House know, and when did they know it?
As President Biden lurches toward a withdrawal from the 2024 election that seems likelier by the hour, the question of the media’s role in hiding his mental decline is taking center stage.
The greatest loser from Biden’s catastrophic meltdown during his debate last week with Donald Trump is not Biden himself.
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Somewhere deep inside, Biden may actually be relieved that he may soon be free of the obligation to perform (or pretend to perform) the world’s most important job.
No, the greatest loser is the media, specifically elite news organizations like The New York Times that have teams of reporters covering the White House. These teams either entirely missed Biden’s sharp cognitive decline — or, worse, actively covered it up.
Either way, a reckoning for the way media outlets have turned into spear-carriers for the Democratic Party may be coming. I hope it will be. It is long overdue.
On Thursday afternoon, New York magazine published a long article about Biden’s decline by Olivia Nuzzi, a Washington correspondent who is its top reporter. Nuzzi wrote in the piece, headlined “The Conspiracy of Silence to Protect Joe Biden,” that top Democrats had talked about Biden’s worsening memory and cognitive problems at least since January.
“Following encounters with the president, they had arrived at the same concern: Could he really do this for another four years? Could he even make it to Election Day?” But the worriers did not want to talk publicly, Nuzzi said. “They were scared and horrified.”
Okay. Those folks want Biden to be president. Their allegiance is to him, not the truth. Thus, the conspiracy. And Nuzzi wrote she could not get these high-ranking Democrats on the record — though it is not clear how hard she tried.
Then, late in the piece, Nuzzi made an extraordinary admission — one whose importance she seems not to have recognized.
She, too, had seen Biden’s decline up close. So had much of the Washington press corps.
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As hard as Biden’s courtiers try to protect Biden, they cannot keep him from every public interaction. The White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner is Washington’s premier annual social event, its so-called “nerd prom.”
Nuzzi met Biden, whom she had covered closely and extensively during the 2020 campaign, at a photo session and reception before the dinner. Here is how she describes the encounter:
Try to wrap your head around what happened that night — April 27, 2024, exactly two months before Joe Biden’s infirmities exploded for the world to see.
The reporters who cover the president, who are the eyes and ears of the world on a man who controls a nuclear arsenal capable of killing billions of people, saw his cognitive decline face-to-face.
They didn’t write about what they had seen. They didn’t investigate it.
They joked about it. With each other. Privately. Nuzzi and the rest were part of the “conspiracy of silence” as much as any Democratic donor.
And in June, when even the most tightly controlled public events could not hide Biden’s infirmities, they wrote of “cheap fakes” (meaning, accurate and real videos) and “misinformation.” Only now that the world knows have they turned on Biden — viciously, as I wrote Wednesday.
Every last one of them should be ashamed. And wondering how they allowed their Democratic partisanship and hatred for Donald Trump and in-group thinking to overcome their most basic instincts to chase the truth and give it to the readers and viewers who pay their bills.
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I almost died working as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times in Iraq 20 years ago. That’s not an exaggeration. I cannot believe what the Times and the rest of the elite media have become. I am heartbroken today.
This is the last and greatest in a series of media catastrophes over the last several years. They all have in common an unwillingness to admit, much less investigate, hard truths that Democrats find unpleasant.
If it does not provoke a reckoning, nothing will. And places like the Times will lose whatever shreds of credibility they have left.
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A-list actor went undercover to be normal for a day, realized it was terrible
Kevin Bacon is no stranger to fame.
After decades in Hollywood, the prolific actor has become a household name. But he once decided to try life outside the spotlight. To do this, he used prosthetics and accessories to form a disguise, but he didn’t like what happened.
“I’m not complaining, but I have a face that’s pretty recognizable,” Bacon explained in a new interview with Vanity Fair. “Putting my hat and glasses on is only going to work to a certain extent.”
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To be able to truly be unrecognizable, he said, “I went to a special effects makeup artist, had consultations and asked him to make me a prosthetic disguise.”
With the makeup artist’s help, he was given a new nose and new teeth. After adding accessories, he ventured out to The Grove, a popular outdoor shopping center in Los Angeles.
“Nobody recognized me,” he recalled. “People were kind of pushing past me, not being nice. Nobody said, ‘I love you.’ I had to wait in line to, I don’t know, buy a f—ing coffee or whatever. I was like, ‘This sucks. I want to go back to being famous.'”
As Bacon explained later in the interview, fame was always something he wanted, even as a child.
“My father [Edmund Bacon, an urban planner] was famous in Philadelphia, which, in some ways, is a small pond. But, for me, it was a big pond,” he explained. “I saw him get recognized by people when he would walk down the street, and seeing that was definitely a big driving force in my life.
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“Frankly, I wanted to be more famous than him. And you can lay me down on the shrink’s couch. We could talk about that for a while. But it was definitely a motivator.”
For Bacon, it’s not only about fame. He told Vanity Fair nearly 50 years after his feature film debut in 1978’s “Animal House” he’s still invested in the art of acting.
“Yes, I am still hungry, and I still feel like the best work is in front of me,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a competition. It’s a competition with myself. I probably did this in the past, but I’m not looking at this actor going, ‘I wish I was him’ or ‘I wish I had what he had.’
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“When I reach out to people, it’s not because I’m trying to get a gig. It’s because I feel like being appreciated for what you do as an artist from somebody else is a nice feeling. If there’s somebody that I admire that comes up and says, ‘Hey, I really like that’ or ‘You did a good job,’ it feels good.”
He also criticized the film industry, saying much of it is “hierarchical bulls—” that causes people within the industry to have “this underlying feeling that we need to be competing with each other.”
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“So, wherever I can feel like I’m a member of a community that is supporting each other in creating these things that I think are super important, I want to do that,” Bacon emphasized.
Family fears missing teen was ‘lured’ from cruise ship during vacation
Authorities are searching for a missing American teenager who disappeared while on a Caribbean Princess cruise docked in Germany.
Aydin Brown, 14, was last seen exiting a Caribbean Princess cruise ship shortly after it docked on July 4 at the port of Warnemünde, according to Rostock Police.
Caribbean Princess told Fox News Digital that they are working with local police to find Brown.
“We are actively collaborating with German law enforcement on a missing person’s case involving a 14-year-old young man who disembarked from the Caribbean Princess in Warnemunde on Thursday morning without an escort.
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“My worst nightmare continues to unroll. Aydin remains missing. It appears once he left the ship in Warnemunde, Germany, he may have been lured away,” Anne Yaktiyol, a cousin of Brown, wrote in a post on social media.
The Rostock police are now using a photo from a surveillance camera to search for the witness who, according to previous investigations, was out and about with the missing teen on Thursday morning prior to his disappearance.
Warnemünde, the city Brown was last seen in, is about two hours from Berlin.
“My cousin Anne took her grandson Aydin on a special European cruise! (Just the two of them) He got off the ship in Germany and went missing about 24 hours ago!,” Amy Kopischke, another cousin of Brown wrote in a post.
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It remains unclear whether Brown left the ship on his own or if he was accompanied by his grandmother. Rostock police said an investigation revealed that Brown and his grandmother reportedly got into an argument which led him to leave the ship.
Police are requesting the witness report immediately to the Rostock Criminal Investigation Department.
The police are also asking the public for help with any information on Brown’s whereabouts.
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“Who knows the unknown young man or can provide information about his whereabouts? Who saw the missing man at around 7:30 a.m. on Thursday morning together with the as yet unknown man at the train station in Warnemünde?” Rostock Police said in a release.
Brown is described as being approximately 5’8″ tall, with brown hair and brown eyes, weighing around 220 pounds. He was last seen wearing a gray, zip-up sweatshirt and dark-colored trouser pants. He was also carrying a large black backpack with “AMAZON” on the front.
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“Upon discovering the situation, we immediately contacted the local police, who have been leading the search ever since,” the cruise line said in a statement. “We understand the distress this situation has caused and will continue to provide ongoing on-site support to the family during this challenging time.”
Yankees announcer rips team for participating in national anthem standoff
In the middle of a losing skid, the New York Yankees tried to get some laughs in the dugout.
Ahead of their final game of their three-game set against the Cincinnati Reds, two Bombers participated in a national anthem standoff with two Reds players.
The game is simple: stay on the field from the beginning of the national anthem, forl as long as you can. The first team to head back into the dugout loses.
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But Yankee manager Aaron Boone eventually had enough, telling his players to get back in the dugout, much to the delight of the Reds dugout.
Thus, much like the Yankees on the field, they lost.
Then, about three hours later, the Reds swept them on the field.
The standoff seemed like innocent fun, but their own announcer was not happy with it.
Michael Kay ripped the Yanks on his radio show Friday afternoon, saying the act was “sophomoric nonsense” that “cheapened the organization.”
“What are we, infants? This is the New York Yankees…” Kay began, while also giving credit to Boone for putting a stop to it. “The New York Yankees don’t play games like that. That’s silly, that’s stupid, it’s childish, it’s infantile.”
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“Let other ridiculous teams do that,” he added. “Why would the Yankees do that? It’s dumb. . . . It makes the Yankees look small. They’re doing a stareoff like they’re in Williamsport? Like it’s the Little League World Series? The New York Yankees, you’re wearing pinstripes, baby. You don’t do stuff like that. And you’ve been losing and playing poorly, and this is what you resort to? Come on, guys, you’re better than that.”
He even went as far as to call the participants “nudniks.”
New York Mets announcer Howie Rose wasn’t too fond of the game, either.
“Am I hopelessly out of touch or is this nothing more than a juvenile, selfish, meaningless, irrelevant and frankly embarrassing exercise in stupidity?” he posted on X.
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The Yankees have lost 14 of their last 19 games after a red-hot start, and if things don’t go smoothly this weekend against the Boston Red Sox, they could be in jeopardy of dropping to third place in the AL East sooner rather than later.
MLB rookie phenom makes history with another dominant outing
Paul Skenes is living up to the hype.
In fact, he’s blowing right by it.
The LSU product was taken by the Pittsburgh Pirates with the No. 1 overall selection in last year’s MLB Draft, and after dominating the minor leagues, they called him up earlier this season.
By the time he got the call, Skenes was the top pitching prospect in baseball and ranked third overall.
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Now, he’s one of the best pitchers in the game.
Entering Friday night, the 22-year-old had a 2.06 ERA through nine MLB starts, allowing three runs or less in each of them. His only game allowing three earned runs was in his MLB debut.
He consistently hits 100 mph on the radar gun with devastating off-speed pitches, which has made him a strikeout machine.
Friday marked his 10th major league start, and the ninth in which he recorded at least seven strikeouts, setting the Major League record for the most in a player’s first 10 games to start a career – he struck out eight New York Mets in seven innings of two-run ball.
The only time he didn’t strike out that many batters was on May 23, his third start, when he had just three punchouts against the San Francisco Giants.
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Since then, it’s been seven straight outings with seven or more strikeouts, which also set a franchise record dating back to 1882.
His career-high in strikeouts so far is 11, which he did in his second start against the Chicago Cubs.
He and fellow rookie Jared Jones have helped the Pirates remain in the wild-card race. They entered the night four games out, but it looks like they found themselves an ace for years to come.
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His noted mustache and relationship with LSU gymnast Livvy Dunne have also helped him reach superstar status across the country, but he doesn’t need much off the field to be loved by Bucs fans.
Husband arrested in disappearance of woman after her body is found
A missing Arizona woman’s remains have been found after she was reported missing, and her husband arrested in connection to her disappearance, the Flagstaff Police Department said on Friday.
According to a statement obtained by FOX 10, the remains of Kelly Paduchowski were found Friday at around 10:00 a.m.
“Recovery efforts are active, and due to the investigative efforts in progress, the location of the discovery will not be disclosed at this time,” the statement read.
Kelly Paduchowski, 45, was reported missing Sunday night after her husband reported that she never returned home following a jog and swim, launching nearly a week-long investigation into her disappearance.
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Daniel Paduchowski, 58, Kelly’s husband, filed a missing persons report after she failed to come home on the evening of June 30, when she went out for a jog and swim, according to police.
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Investigators said that on June 30, the day that Kelly went missing, cellphone data from Kelly’s phone was traced back to the area of the Schultz Creek Trailhead around 10:20 a.m., where Daniel was seen in the same area around 11:30 a.m. the same day.
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Police also interviewed family members and other witnesses throughout the course of the investigation and determined that evidence from the home of Kelly and Daniel shows he assaulted her.
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Prior to finding Kelly’s body, police said, based on current evidence and information, they believed that Kelly may be the victim of a homicide.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Flagstaff Police Department for comment.