President Trump was rushed off the stage by the Secret Service at a rally in Butler, Pa., Saturday night after apparent gunshots rang out.

Gunfire appeared to break out shortly after Trump began speaking at the rally at Butler Farm Show grounds on Saturday evening.

The former president had just begun to fire up the crowd when as many as five shots were heard and he went down, surrounded by Secret Service agents.

Read the full article about the Trump rally shooting by Sarah Rumpf-Whitten

President Biden biographer Chris Whipple recently disclosed he doesn’t’ believe that former President Obama could convince Biden to abandon his re-election bid.

In a recent interview with NewsNation, Whipple – who wrote “The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House” – said it’s “not quite true” that Obama could influence Biden to leave office amid growing calls within the Democratic Party for the president to step aside from the race.

The president “has a chip on his shoulder,” the author stated in the interview, noting that tension between him and Obama’s team might prevent the former president’s advice from getting through to Biden. Whipple said of the two men: “It’s a fraught relationship, for sure.”

Read the full article about President Obama by Gabriel Hays

Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) released a statement about the caucus’s meeting with President Biden on Saturday afternoon.

In the press release, Jayapal praised the sitting president but also said that caucus members “asked tough questions about the path forward.”

“Today, the CPC had a productive and engaging conversation with President Biden,” Jayapal began. “The President has been a champion for working people and families across the country and throughout his time in office and we have been proud to partner with him in passing major legislation to cut costs and raise wages.”

“We spoke frankly to the President about our concerns and asked tough questions about the path forward,” she added. “We appreciate his willingness to thoughtfully answer and address our Members.”

Jayapal reaffirmed the caucus’s support for Biden and vowed to help “defeat Donald Trump” in November.

“As a caucus, we will continue working to do everything in our power to defeat Donald Trump and promote our Proposition Agenda – a slate of day one, popular and populist policies to deliver for the people.”

Doug Sosnik, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, recently wrote that President Biden’s path to reelection ‘has all but vanished’.

In a New York Times op-ed published on Saturday, Sosnik wrote that former President Trump “is now the clear front-runner to be the next president of the United States.”

“President Biden has spent much of 2024 with a more challenging path to winning a second presidential term in November than Donald Trump,” he wrote. “But for reasons that have become glaringly obvious, that path has all but vanished.”

Sosnik argued that Trump could now beat the sitting president in states that Biden won in 2020.

“Current polling shows [Biden] trailing Mr. Trump by as many as five points in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and more narrowly in Michigan…the deficit in Pennsylvania must be particularly disconcerting for Mr. Biden and his campaign, given the time and resources devoted to the state.”

Vice President Kamala Harris vowed to “continue to fight” for a second Biden term on Saturday, as the president continues to face scrutiny about his cognitive abilities.

Speaking to a crowd in Philadelphia, Harris alluded to the challenges that the Biden campaign have recently been facing. Since Biden’s debate performance against Trump last month, the president’s ability to serve in office has been questioned by both Republicans and Democrats.

“The past few days have been a reminder that running for president of the United States is never easy, nor should it be,” the vice president said. “But one thing we know about our president, Joe Biden… he is a fighter, and he is the first to say, ‘When you get knocked down, you get right back up.'”

“We will continue to fight,” she declared. “We will continue to organize. And in November, we will win.”

Harris also bashed former President Trump during her speech, accusing him of wanting to institute an authoritarian regime.

“Consider Donald Trump openly vowed if reelected, that he will be a dictator on day one, that he will weaponize the Department of Justice against his political enemies, that he will round up peaceful protests and throw them out of our country and even, quote, ‘Terminate the United States Constitution’,” Harris claimed.

“Well, not on our watch. President Biden and I will always fight to protect our Constitution.”

Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., recently declared his support for President Biden as the Democratic Party’s nominee for 2024 amid a deluge of calls for the U.S. leader to abandon his re-election bid.

The far-left lawmaker, who lost the Democratic Party primary to Biden during the 2020 presidential cycle, made his case for the president in a New York Times guest essay and called on those looking to ditch Biden following last month’s debate to get behind him.

“Enough! Mr. Biden may not be the ideal candidate, but he will be the candidate and should be the candidate,” the senator declared.

Read the full article about Bernie Sanders by Gabriel Hays

Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla. suggested that President Biden’s ‘inner circle’ is hindering him during an interview on MSNBC’s “The Katie Phang Show” on Saturday.

“The stakes are high for President Biden,” the Democrat said. “I don’t know that he’s been well served by his inner circle. There’s been no accountability, quite frankly, since since that debate.”

“But what I saw actually, in Detroit, at the rally the other day, gives me some optimism because, you know, I think Dems have to improve on our comms game,” he added.

Moskowitz later clarified that he is not calling for Biden to drop out at this point in the race.

“I’m not calling for President Biden to get out of the race,” he said. “I mean, you’re talking about someone who’s had 50 years of public service and put his public service record up against anyone and any living politician elected official right now, in the country.”

“But, you know, look, if you lose the presidency and you lose the House and you lose the Senate, you basically lose the whole country to Donald Trump.”

Fox News’ Daniel Scully contributed to this update.

President Biden is spending his weekend away from the White House at his Delaware beach house, a well-known retreat for the president, ahead of high-stakes interviews and the Republican Party’s convention next week.

Following a Friday evening campaign event in Michigan, the president’s weekend at Rehoboth Beach has been largely quiet after he acknowledged on Thursday that he needs to “pace” himself yet insisted he should take on a more robust schedule ahead of the 2024 election.

Biden is expected to take part in two conference calls on Saturday with House Democrats – the New Dems Coalition and the Congressional Progressive Caucus – but has no public events on his Saturday Rehoboth schedule. Thirteen Democrats in the New Dems Coalition have called for Biden to step aside in the 2024 race.

Read the full article about President Biden by Kyle Morris

Longtime sports broadcaster Bob Costas took the Democratic Party to task for acting surprised over President Biden’s debate performance last week, stating it’s been “obvious” that he’s been on the decline for years.

The NBC Sports legend appeared on CNN’s “Smerconish” Saturday morning to react to all the angst within the party following Biden’s disastrous performance. He slammed liberals for not admitting Biden’s mental decline sooner so that a better candidate could be found to beat former President Trump.

“That one atrocious night was simply writ-large what could be seen for years and years, that he is in serious decline,” Costas said. He added that it “makes you wonder whether we’ve been gaslit by the Democrats.”PRESSURE

Read the full article about Bob Costas by Gabriel Hays

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently broke his silence about President Biden accidentally calling him Putin at the recent NATO conference on Thursday.

“And now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine, who has as much courage as he has determination,” Biden said at the time. “Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin.”

“He’s going to beat President Putin. President Zelenskyy. I’m so focused on beating Putin,” he added. “We got to worry about it. Anyway, Mr. President.”

Speaking in Ireland before a meeting with Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris, the Ukrainian leader told reporters on Saturday that the incident was a forgivable mistake.

“It’s a mistake. I think United States gave a lot of support for Ukrainians,” he said.

“We can forget some mistakes, I think so.”

President Biden has begun focusing on a ‘working-class’ agenda on the advice of Senator Bernie Sanders, according to a recent report in the Washington Post.

The Post reported on Saturday that Sanders visited the White House on Wednesday to discuss a potential second Biden term. Speaking to the President’s closest advisors, the Vermont senator reportedly argued that Biden should focus on a 100-day plan aimed at “working class” voters.

In a social media post on Friday, Sanders claimed that Biden will enact a number of progressive policies – including ending all medical debt and raising the minimum wage – if elected to a second term.

“At a time when the billionaire class has never done better, and when we are experiencing unprecedented income and wealth inequality, President Biden tonight laid out an agenda that begins to speak to the needs of America’s working class,” the tweet read.

Sanders also added that Biden would expand Social Security and Medicare benefits, lower the cost of childcare and build more affordable housing if elected, among other initiatives. On Friday night, Biden pledged to end all medical debt at a rally in Michigan. 

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont on Friday joined the roughly 20 Democratic federal lawmakers who have called on President Biden to step aside from the 2024 presidential election.

Lamont told reporters in New Haven that he is “simpatico” with Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., who earlier had called on Biden to drop out of the election. 

“I think we’ve come to the same conclusion,” Lamont said, according to Politico.

He did not explain his reasoning but did say the president “did us proud” at a news conference Thursday closing the NATO Summit.

“Governor Lamont has been clear that it’s the President’s decision to make, and his comments today reflect that,” Lamont spokesperson Julia Bergman told Politico in a statement. 

Lamont appears to be the first Democratic governor to publicly call on Biden to step aside from the party’s presidential nomination. He was one of the first Democratic governors to endorse Biden in 2020.

The former GOP staffers who host the popular “Ruthless” podcast offered a “boot camp” for their Democratic counterparts on Capitol Hill who are suddenly facing a hostile media questioning President Biden’s acuity. 

“Let me just start with a couple of truths in American politics that we all know and are very familiar with,” Ruthless co-host John Ashbrook began the tongue-in-cheek lesson on Tuesday’s episode. “The first one is that the easiest job in town is Democrat press secretary. The second is that Democrat hearts are notoriously cold and power hungry. Republican hearts are big and giving. That’s just the way it is.” 

“And here, as a display of bipartisanship, we know that these Democrat press secretaries have never in their careers had to do their job a single day. So we thought as Republicans we could provide a few tips for them to keep in mind as they are fielding questions from reporters they’ve never before fielded,” Ashbrook said.

Co-host Michael Duncan provided the first tip, which involves how Democratic press secretaries should handle reporters when confronted on Capitol Hill. 

“You may not be used to this when you’re walking around the Capitol with your boss, but when you’re in an elevator and it gets to the floor and the doors open, you’re gonna see reporters there,” Duncan said. “This may be new to you, but they’re gonna have questions that you have to answer. And so what you’re gonna want to do is huddle with your boss before that door opens and figure out what his statement or her statement will be.”

“You mean something other than like, ‘How’s your day? Or what’s your favorite color?'” co-host Josh Holmes chimed in. 

“Well, there’s no Donald Trump tweet for them to read for you to react to,” Duncan quipped. 

Holmes, Duncan and Ashbrook previously served as top aides and campaign strategists to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Fox News Digital’s Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this update.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., joined “Cavuto Live” on Saturday and said the Republican Party is “completely united behind Donald Trump” while Democrats remain divided over whether President Biden should step aside.

“While Democrats eat their own, we’re going into a convention with a lot of momentum and we’re going to come out of it on a very high note going into the November 5th election,” Emmer said.

While Emmer struck an optimistic tone about the prospect of a second Trump term, host Neil Cavuto pressed Emmer on the presumptive Republican nominee’s record, noting that his handling of COVID-19 was one reason Democrats captured the White House in 2020.

“It’s never perfect,” Emmer acknowledged. “And I’m not going to sit here and tell you that one administration or the other has made no mistakes, and the other one has made all mistakes. But I’m going to tell you, the facts are pretty clear. Under Donald Trump you had record economic growth.” 

“Throwing the pandemic in there is, I think, a little bit of a red herring since nobody knew what we were dealing with and people were trying to work on it on a daily basis,” he added.  

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., wrote in a New York Times op-ed that he will do “all that I can to see that President Biden is re-elected.” 

“Despite my disagreements with him on particular issues, he has been the most effective president in the modern history of our country and is the strongest candidate to defeat Donald Trump — a demagogue and pathological liar,” Sanders wrote in the op-ed, which was published Saturday.

“It’s time to learn a lesson from the progressive and centrist forces in France who, despite profound political differences, came together this week to soundly defeat right-wing extremism.”

Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, once competed with Biden for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. While the progressive icon noted several disagreements with Biden’s policies, he nevertheless criticized Democrats for turning on the president after a weak debate performance. 

“But for over two weeks now, the corporate media has obsessively focused on the June presidential debate and the cognitive capabilities of a man who has, perhaps, the most difficult and stressful job in the world. The media has frantically searched for every living human being who no longer supports the president or any neurologist who wants to appear on TV. Unfortunately, too many Democrats have joined that circular firing squad,” Sanders wrote. 

“Yes. I know: Mr. Biden is old, is prone to gaffes, walks stiffly and had a disastrous debate with Mr. Trump. But this I also know: A presidential election is not an entertainment contest. It does not begin or end with a 90-minute debate.

“Enough! Mr. Biden may not be the ideal candidate, but he will be the candidate and should be the candidate. And with an effective campaign that speaks to the needs of working families, he will not only defeat Mr. Trump but beat him badly. It’s time for Democrats to stop the bickering and nit-picking.” 

HBO host Bill Maher
on Friday night held a quasi-roast of potential replacements for President Biden on Friday night, focusing his fire on Vice President Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., in particular.

During the latest episode of “Real Time with Bill Maher,” the host declared that “Biden is toast” and then ran through a list of possible replacements, offering the strengths and weaknesses of each. Both Harris and Newsom received Maher’s harshest dings, with the host exposing reasons why they probably won’t be getting to the White House.

“Harris has never been popular. You can count the number of delegates she won in the  2020 primaries on one hand, as long as that hand has no fingers,” Maher quipped.

Maher started off the bit telling the Democratic Party to “stop f—ing around” and get to replacing Biden already, because “he is not going to be the Democrats’ candidate in 2024.” 

“Biden is toast,” the comedian stated, and then got into his list of potential Biden replacements, starting with Harris.

Joking about her pro-abortion bona fides, Maher said, “She won’t just protect Plan B, she is plan B.” 

Mentioning her appeal as a diverse candidate, the host said, “Harris would be the first woman president, the first Black woman president and first Asian president.” However, he immediately discounted those attributes, stating, “But I don’t vote for who will be the first. I vote for who will win.”

He followed up by pointing out her unpopularity in elections, and then went on to quip that while vice president, “she’s been quieter than an electric car.” Hitting her with one last salvo of mockery, Maher added, “It’s not fair that she’s not popular, she’s intelligent, and accomplished, and in fact, was put in charge of the border and look at how – okay, bad example.”

The HBO host then introduced Newsom as the “only governor, with the possible exception of Kristi Noem, who looks like he could do porn.” He also joked about Newsom being so eager to be the man that replaces Biden, that he “gets an alert on his phone every time Biden can’t think of a word.”

Maher then hammered Newsom over his state’s homeless problem, quipping, “They’ll attack him on California’s homeless problem, but there’s a response to that: the homeless can live anywhere, but they choose California.”

“Nine out of ten machete-wielding meth addicts say they wouldn’t be unhoused anywhere else.”

Fox News Digital’s Gabriel Hays contributed to this update.

James Carville, a veteran Democratic campaign strategist, warned Friday that sticking with President Biden is exactly what former President Trump wants.

MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell noted that Carville seeks to have former presidents Obama and Clinton moderate town halls to discern who can replace Biden as the nominee. The host then asked, “Is that the recipe for chaos?”

“You know, it might be chaos. [But] I tell you, what we are doing right now, we’re doing exactly what Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago wants us to do,” Carville said, referencing a report that the Trump campaign wants to face Biden.

“If the Democratic Party is hellbent on pleasing Donald Trump, then go ahead and [run Biden]. It’s just that simple,” he said.

Carville then slammed “Washington-types” he says quibble with the details about his idea for town halls to find a new candidate, “Well, I don’t care, do something! Don’t just stand there!” 

“The details are, we are on track to lose an election to a major criminal who is going to destroy the western alliance, the constitution and everything in between. So we ought to act like it,” he argued.

Mitchell followed by asking what he thinks Democratic Party elites like “Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer maybe, Hakeem Jeffries” are up to.

“I think they’re mortified,” Carville replied. “I think they want to make a change. I think they see the path that we’re on.”

Fox News Digital’s Alexander Hall contributed to this update.

A voter who criticized President Biden is speaking out about his encounter with a Biden campaign staffer after he said she tried to shut down his interview with a New York Times reporter. 

Stephen Stubbs, a First Amendment attorney from Henderson, Nevada, told Fox News Digital in an interview that he was invited to attend a June 28 campaign event at the East Las Vegas Community Center featuring Vice President Kamala Harris.

Stubbs said he initially wanted to attend the Harris event to hear how the administration planned to deal with inflation, but in the wake of Biden’s performance at the CNN Presidential Debate, he wanted to hear what she would say regarding questions about Biden’s mental acuity.

“Everybody was talking about the debate the night before. Everybody was. And everybody was concerned. There were a few people that were vocal and saying, we have to move forward with what we have, so let’s not talk negatively. But 90% of the people were critical of Joe Biden and [were] very, very worried,” he recalled. 

Staffers wearing Biden-Harris shirts at the event went around “strongly hinting” that people shouldn’t say anything negative about the president at a Biden event, according to Stubbs. 

He said he was sitting outside eating his tacos and ice cream and happened to sit next to the chairwoman of the Democratic Party in Nevada, who was approached a few minutes later by New York Times politics fellow Simon Levien for an interview. 

Stubbs said he began talking to Levien, who then asked him what he thought about the debate the night before. 

A Biden staffer who was following Levien around took out her phone and began recording their conversation. “That in itself was kind of intimidating,” Stubbs told Fox News Digital.

“I’m concerned about who’s running the country right now. And I said, from what I saw last night, Biden should step down and Kamala Harris [who] was elected the vice president, that is her job, she should fulfill the rest of his term. And when I said that, the staffer said, I’m going to stop this right now. This is a Biden event. I’m sorry, but I’m going to stop this. She tried to stop it,” Stubbs explained. 

“Now, to the New York Times’ credit, they turned to her and said, no. I’m continuing with this interview, but the whole time she was giving me, like, daggers. Just daggers. Like, how dare you talk negatively about Biden to the New York Times.” 

Levien identified the staffer as Clio Calvo-Platero, deputy communications director for the Biden campaign in Nevada.

Fox News Digital’s Ashley Carnahan contributed to this update.

A top-rated pollster says the presidential race is still “up for grabs” despite the wave of negative press coverage and pressure on President Biden to withdraw after his bad debate.

An NPR/PBS News/Marist national poll
released Friday finds that if the November election were held today, 50% of registered voters would support Democrat President Biden while 48% would support Republican former President Trump. The percentage point spread between the two candidates is within the poll’s margin for error.

The two candidates poll very close together even though nearly two in three Americans (64%), including 38% of Democrats and 45% of Biden supporters, do not think the president has the mental fitness to serve in office. A majority of independents (68%) said the same. 

Regardless of whom they plan to support, nearly six in 10 Americans think Trump will win this year’s presidential election, according to the survey results. 

“Despite a series of cataclysmic political events, including Trump’s felony convictions and Biden’s abysmal debate performance, the race for the White House remains essentially unchanged,” said Lee M. Miringoff, Director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion. “But Biden needs to restore confidence among his party faithful that he can win. And Trump needs to tread very lightly during the Republican convention about Project 2025 and avoid positioning the GOP as too extreme.”

National polls take a snapshot of voter sentiment but are not necessarily predictive of who will win key battleground states and claim the White House with an Electoral College victory.

Marist College is a top-rated pollster according to 538’s pollster ratings, which are based on historical track record and methodological transparency.

The poll surveyed 1,309 adults and was conducted July 9-10. 

The Biden campaign
is taking a victory lap after President Biden’s highly anticipated NATO press conference on Thursday, claiming he not only met expectations but surpassed them.

A Biden campaign official told Fox News Digital that Biden’s performance was what the American people were looking for and praised the president’s insightful responses to questions that went into great detail on foreign policy, including the Russia-Ukraine War, China and other topics dealing with foreign affairs.

The campaign also believes that the performance proved Biden can handle Trump and believes that substance over style matters, and it matters to voters who will ultimately be swayed by the actual merits of what the two candidates are saying.

Biden, according to the campaign, articulately laid out the economic progress under his watch and discussed complex foreign policy issues in a way that Trump is unable to do.

Biden, during the press conference, was also peppered with questions from reporters who pressed him on whether he would step aside amid mounting pressure from members within his own party following his disastrous debate performance last month.

Despite the glowing review, the campaign source acknowledged that one night, be it a debate or a press conference, will not significantly move the needle in terms of votes and voters will instead be moved by robust campaigning, knocking on doors, phone calls, advertisements and campaign travel, which Biden plans to do more of in the coming weeks as part of a “full bore” schedule.

Biden said he is “determined” to stay in the race and maintained that he is fit to serve as president now and for the next four years. 

Fox News Digital’s Andrew Mark Miller and Paul Steinhauser contributed to this update.

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Penn., chastised his fellow Democrats who have called on President Biden to withdraw from the 2024 election.

Several Democrats have urged Biden to step aside, fearing that he will lose to former President Trump. These lawmakers, editorial writers and pundits have appealed to Biden’s ego, arguing his legacy would be celebrated if he withdrew for the good of the party and country and let another candidate face Trump.

“Democrats, stop worrying about Joe Biden’s legacy and think about yours,” Fetterman scolded on X.

“Abandon a great president after a rough debate or stand with the only person who ever beat Trump’s a– into dust. All must choose, but we’re headed for assured mutual destruction if we don’t cut the s—,” he wrote.

At least 19 Democratic lawmakers have publicly called on Biden to step aside in favor of a younger candidate. But Fetterman has consistently supported Biden and urged his colleagues to do the same.

Pennsylvania is a key battleground state and whoever wins the 19 Electoral College votes at stake there is likely to win the presidency. 

Chris Whipple, an author and filmmaker who wrote a biography of President Biden, said Friday that not even former President Obama may be able to convince Biden to withdraw from the 2024 election.

Whipple was interviewed Friday on NewsNation’s “Vargas Reports,” where he said it was “nonsense” to think that Obama is the only person who could persuade Biden to step aside.

“I just talked about reports that Obama is worried that Biden can’t win,” host Elizabeth Vargas said. “The relationship between these two men is really complicated. A lot of people have been saying ‘The only person who could tell Biden to step aside is former President Obama.’ Not quite true.”

Whipple, the author of “The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House,” agreed that Biden and Obama have a “complicated relationship.” But he also said they are “truly close,” even though there is tension at times.

“They bonded when Beau Biden was dying with that brain tumor, and… Obama really took Joe Biden under his wing,” Whipple said. 

But the author noted that Biden “has a chip on his shoulder.” 

“He’s always felt that he was the Syracuse law guy, and all of Obama’s people were Harvard and Yale, and they looked down on him, and that he, of course, put his finger on the scale for [former Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton in 2016,” he said. “So, it’s a fraught relationship, for sure.”

A new report from The Hill provides insight into the debate inside the Senate Democratic caucus over whether President Biden or Vice President Harris would be the stronger candidate versus former President Trump.

Democratic senators and strategists weighed in, arguing that Harris will clearly be the party’s nominee if the 81-year-old Biden decides to withdraw. 

“How are you going to skip over the first vice president who is a woman of color,” asked one Democratic lawmaker, according to The Hill. 

A Democratic strategist who believes Biden can still beat Trump told The Hill “it is 99-percent guaranteed it’s Kamala Harris” who would be the party’s nominee if Biden drops out. 

“I find it very hard for our structure to deny the vice president, who happens to be a Black female, an opportunity to represent the party,” the strategist said, according to the outlet. “I just don’t think that’s going to happen that they’re going to pass her over.”

“So then the question is can she be better in those six states,” the strategist added, referring to the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. 

Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, told The Hill that Harris would be a strong Democratic candidate for president. 

“I think she would be in the driver’s seat to get the nomination,” he said. “It would not be a coronation for Vice President Harris but she would be the strong favorite to win the nomination.”

“I think she is a much stronger national political figure than when she was named vice president. She’s done a great job, publicly, the last several months, where there’s been a lot more scrutiny.”

President Biden borrowed from his opponent former President Trump’s playbook and took aim at reporters who’ve covered his recent mental slips during a rally in Detroit.

“The press and their good guys and women up there, they’ve been hammering me,” Biden told supporters on Friday. “I make a lot of mistakes.” 

The crowd started to loudly boo journalists who were there to cover Biden’s remarks after he made those comments. 

“No, no, no. That’s okay,” Biden said. “They’ve been hammering me because I sometimes confuse names. I say Charlie instead of Bill. But guess what? Donald Trump has gotten a free pass.” 

The moment was reminiscent of several Trump rallies where the presumptive Republican nominee takes shots at the press, referring to reporters as “fake news” to the cheers and adulation of his supporters. 

Several Republicans told Politico this week they have enjoyed watching Democrats face uncomfortable media questions as Biden’s age and mental acuity have dominated news headlines following his poor performance at the CNN Presidential Debate last month. 

Former White House press secretary turned MSNBC host Jen Psaki said that President Biden’s team was not doing enough to show his “empathy” as concerns about Biden’s cognitive ability threaten his campaign. 

“The strategy is not going well,” Psaki said Thursday on “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” adding that the president’s staff is not bringing out Biden’s “magic” in his campaign.

Biden fielded questions from reporters Thursday night during the 75th anniversary of NATO summit amid concerns about his cognitive health and ability to serve as president. 

“It’s not a good sign when everybody’s taking it live and the questions are predominantly about the president’s health and well-being,” Psaki said. “That’s not a good sign on how things are going.” 

She continued: “At the same time, it’s also your job when you’re advising a president, to bring out their magic.” 

“I know that’s a weird way of saying it, but President Biden’s magic is not necessarily press conferences, I think it’s safe to say,” Psaki said. “It’s not even really necessarily interviews.” 

“It’s his interactions with people,” Psaki said. “He’s incredibly empathetic. He cares about, he loves to hold babies. He legitimately loves them. He loves to travel with members of Congress.”

“So, that you’re not seeing,” she said. “And because you’re not seeing, and the public is not seeing him and the magic of Joe Biden, you’re relying on how is he going to answer the ninth question about his mental acuity at a press conference and in that sense the strategy is not going well.” 

Fox News Digital’s Jeffrey Clark contributed to this update.

Ex-Obama adviser David Axelrod said that President Biden is increasingly trailing former President Trump in the battleground states, making it an open question as to whether he should step down.

“He really needs a royal flush to win this race,” Axelrod said Friday on CNN. 

Multiple media figures and Biden allies have called on the president to withdraw from the race after a shaky debate performance last month. 

“The president’s been behind for 10 months, consistently in this data,” Axelrod said. “[According to] deeper data that the analytics people look at, he is now behind in all the battleground states and in some cases, well behind, beyond the margin of error.”

“So, yes, of course he can win,” Axelrod said. “Anyone can win. But given the stakes, and I think this is what those Democratic officials are thinking, given the stakes, the fact that he can win is not a persuasive argument. The question is: what are the odds that he would win, and would we have a better chance with someone else? That‘s the question everybody is pondering.”

Axelrod said that Biden is surrounded by a “very small coterie of advisors who he actually trusts and listens to” about his candidacy.

“The president is pretty insulated,” he said. 

Fox News Digital’s Jeffrey Clark contributed to this update.

CNN host Michael Smerconish ripped the Biden campaign and a local Wisconsin radio station for editing out portions of a recent interview with thepresident. 

The host, who also has his own radio show, appeared on “CNN This Morning” Friday and told Kasie Hunt that altering audio of a presidential interview and then airing it live is something a radio station should never do.

Smerconish told Hunt that if a presidential campaign asked a show to edit audio, “the answer is hell no! We should have run it live.”

The host’s remarks came after Wisconsin radio network Civic Media admitted on Thursday that its program, “The Earl Ingram Show,” made multiple edits to its interview with President Biden before it aired on July 4, at the campaign’s request.

In a statement, the network said, “it was reported to Civic Media management that immediately after the phone interview was recorded, the Biden campaign called and asked for two edits to the recording before it aired.”

“Civic Media management immediately undertook an investigation and determined that the production team at the time viewed the edits as non-substantive and broadcast and published the interview with two short segments removed,” the statement added.

Fox News Digital’s Gabriel Hays contributed to this update.

President Biden continues to have support from Democratic delegates, despite a growing number of elected Democrats calling on him to step aside ahead of the 2024 election amid concern over his age and mental acuity.

Two weeks after the president’s disastrous debate against former President Donald Trump, as well as his Thursday press conference at NATO, Fox News Digital spoke to a handful of Democratic delegates who remain largely supportive of Biden and intend to cast their votes in support of him at the party’s convention next month.

Some delegates also dismissed talk of Vice President Kamala Harris as a replacement in the upcoming election, insisting that she and the president are an unbreakable team.

“I think he did an awesome job last night. I really do,” said Joanne Chesley, a pledged Biden delegate from North Carolina. “His clarity and his spontaneity … just well-informed responses. I was super impressed.”

Maribel Balbin, a pledged Biden delegate from Miami, Florida, said she understands “the concern that has been expressed” and insisted that it’s “nothing new.”

“Normally he makes mistakes about people and places, just the same as we have seen the former president do in his rallies,” she said. “On a personal level, I am not concerned, and I have not changed my views of the president or what the president stands for.”

Echoing Balbin, Karl Gentles, a pledged Biden delegate from Arizona, said his “position hasn’t changed” about Biden and that it would be a “disaster” for Democrats to replace him at this point.

“I believe that you’ve got a candidate that’s been fully vetted,” he said. “He’s brought you all this way, three and a half years of significant success in the administration. I think it would be, in all honesty, disastrous to change out your candidate in this late date.”

Fox News Digital’s Kyle Morris contributed to this update.

Democrats and the GOP had wildly different perspectives on President Joe Biden’s highly anticipated NATO Summit news conference, with Republicans dubbing the event another campaign win in Trump’s back pocket and Democrats having mixed reactions.

Even so, there was a tone shift among some Democrats who thought Biden’s performance was “strong.” One Democratic activist went so far as to say he believes there are “people who owe President Biden an apology” after the president’s press conference. The comments come after Democrat lawmakers and pundits alike have either called on Biden to drop out of the race or expressed concerns about his aging.

Meanwhile, a Trump campaign official told Fox News Digital after Thursday night’s press conference, “It appears Biden did enough to convince his apologists that he should remain on the ballot, but he also reinforced what the American people know.” 

“Their lives are being hurt by his weakness and failure on a daily basis,” the source said.

Biden started out earlier in the day stumbling when he introduced Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “President Putin” at the NATO summit in Washington, D.C. He immediately caught his gaffe and corrected himself. However, later during the evening press conference, he also referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump” and did not correct himself.

During and after the press conference, Biden’s immediate team and many of his allies were quick to tout the event as an overwhelming success. A source familiar with the workings of the Biden campaign also said that Biden had exceeded expectations with a thorough discussion of foreign policy.

The source added, however, that the press conference alone won’t ultimately convince voters but that continued campaigning and travel by Biden should.

Some Democrats claimed that the president’s answers regarding foreign policy issues showed him to have expertise in international affairs.

“To answer the question on everyone’s minds: No, Joe Biden does not have a doctorate in foreign affairs. He’s just that f—ing good,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates wrote in a post to X.

Fox News Digital’s Jamie Joseph contributed to this update.

Comedian Jon Stewart said Biden wouldn’t qualify for a job as simple as a Home Depot cashier based on his debate performance last month on this week’s episode of “The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart.”

Stewart, along with guests, Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor of Pod Save America and CNN political commentator Bakari Sellers, analyzed the future of Biden’s presidency and the party’s response to previous crises. 

“Bill Clinton on the eve of it all, it came out he had had an affair, I can’t remember- Jennifer Flowers I think it was, and then it was the Paula Jones situation and then there was the Monica Lewinsky situation and Democrats did fall in line,” Stewart said Thursday. “I mean people made- ‘Oh, this is terrible and I’m disappointed with the president,’ but ultimately the Democrats did fall in line.”

Sellers noted that Republicans fell in line after former President Trump said he was resolved to stay in the race in 2016, adding that the party doesn’t “fall in love,” they “fall in line.”

But, Stewart said the two instances are different because the problem is Biden’s mental state and personal health. 

“I think that you are soft selling the more fundamental aspect of people viewing somebody who, I’ll be perfectly honest with you, I don’t know of a job interview that you could have gone on and delivered the performance that was delivered by Joe Biden and gotten a job,” he said. “I’m not talking about the presidency, I’m talking about, like, cashier at Home Depot, like a job that you would not think, ‘Okay, that is the hardest job in the entire world.’”

Sellers countered, “The only problem with that, Jon, and the only problem with framing it as such is the fact that you discount everything that he’s accomplished in the first three and a half years.”

Fox News Digital’s Kendall Tietz contributed to this update?

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow wondered Thursday if President Biden’s team is giving him inaccurate polling information that’s making him certain he is the Democratic Party’s best chance to defeat former President Trump.

During a panel on MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes,” network pundits Hayes, Maddow, Joy Reid and Nicolle Wallace discussed Biden’s remarks at his NATO summit press conference, with each commentator weighing in on Biden’s continued confidence that he’s the one to beat Trump.

“It makes me worried that the president is being given information about his political standing that may not be based in reality,” Maddow said.

Wallace gave a pointed response to the president’s stated commitment to staying in the race, saying that every incumbent president who had equal or worse poll numbers at this stage in the race has lost.

“Two things on the politics: there is no incumbent president with lower approval ratings who won. There are only three with lower ratings than he has right now, and they all lost. Donald Trump, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter,” she said.

Wallace added that there is “right now, no poll that shows [Biden] winning.”

Fox News’ Gabriel Hays contributed to this update.

President Joe Biden still has time to turn his campaign around and evade being replaced as the nominee despite a damaging two weeks that followed the first presidential debate, Democrat strategists tell Fox News Digital.

Biden faces increased calls to step down as the Democratic nominee following his performance at the first presidential debate, however strategists with knowledge of presidential campaigns say irreversible damage has not been done to his re-election efforts.

“The president has been clear — he’s the elected nominee, and he is not budging from that position unless god himself intervenes,” Democrat strategist Mark Penn told Fox News Digital when asked about the state of Biden’s campaign.

“Right now, Donald Trump is clearly leading, but it’s nowhere near double digits, so the race remains within the ability of a few percent of switching voters to change the outcome and, as events like the debate show, there’s plenty of game-changing possibilities.”

Penn added that “net-net Biden is now the underdog, but this race is far from over.”

Jessica Tarlov, Fox News Contributor and Democrat political strategist, also said that Biden has more than enough time to turn his campaign around before November.

“Is there enough time? Of course. Four months is a lifetime in politics. The election is about Trump. Those that will support him and those that won’t. I’m not saying Biden has ground to make up, but Trump remains hugely unpopular and polarizing through all of the president’s troubles,” Tarlov said.

Fox News Digital’s Aubrie Spady contributed to this update.

Gov. Chris Sununu for a couple of years has been one of former President Trump’s most vocal GOP critics.

But New Hampshire’s popular Republican governor says that his state “is very much in play for the former president,” who next week officially becomes the GOP’s 2024 presidential nominee.

It’s been nearly a quarter-century since a Republican carried swing state New Hampshire in a presidential election. You have to go back to then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush in 2000.

But in the wake of two recent polls that indicated a margin-of-error race in New Hampshire and following President Biden’s extremely rough debate performance two weeks ago, Republicans are increasingly hopeful they can bring an end to the losing streak.

“It’s going to be a coin toss. It’s really at the end of the day going to be a 50-50 state,” Sununu said in a national exclusive interview with Fox News Digital in his hometown in New Hampshire’s Seacoast region.

Sununu predicted that Trump “is going to do very, very well in a swing state like New Hampshire.”

Fox News Digital’s Paul Steinhauser contributed to this update.

President Biden enthusiastically pledged to stay in the presidential race amid cheers from supporters in Detroit on Friday.

His remarks stand in contrast to some Democrats who are calling for the 81-year-old to exit the race.

“Don’t you quit” and “Four more years” came from the crowd during the campaign event.

Despite the pessimism that exist within the Democratic Party about Biden’s candidacy, the odds of Biden dropping out remain slim, judging by his speech.

“Folks I’m the nominee. I’m the nominee,” he said Friday. “In part because 14 million Democrats like you voted for me in the primaries. You made me the nominee. No one else.”

So far, 19 Democrats have urged Biden to drop out, following his disastrous debate performance against former President Trump last month. 

Biden took several shots at Trump during the rally. He noted he won Michigan in 2020 and pledged to do it again.

“I know him, Donald Trump is a loser,” said Biden.