SAHARA REPORTERS
United States President, Joe Biden has reportedly told a gathering of Democrats governors that he needs to get more sleep and work fewer hours, including curtailing events after 8pm.
The development was said to be according to two people who participated in the meeting and several others briefed on his comments.
The remarks, first reported by The New York Times, came as 81-year-old Biden sought to reassure a group of more than 20 state leaders about his ability to defeat former President Donald Trump in November and govern effectively for another four years.
But Biden told the governors, some of whom were at the White House while others participated virtually, that he was staying in the race.
According to the report, Biden’s comment left several of the governors in the room frustrated, sources told CNN, and is one of the reasons that some of the participants have been rankled by the statement of loyalty and enthusiasm from them distributed by the Biden campaign on Thursday.
The White House did not immediately comment about what the president said. A Biden campaign aide argued that, as well as doing debate prep in the week after his two trips to Europe, Biden was engaged in hours of official work in addition to the hours of campaign work.
“President (George W.) Bush went to bed at 9, and President (Barack) Obama made dinner at 6:30,” said Biden campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz. “Normal presidents strike a balance, and so does Joe Biden. Hardly the same rigor as Donald Trump, who spends half of his day ranting on Truth Social about plans that would cause a recession and the other half golfing.”
Biden also made a joke to the governors that didn’t go over well: “I’m fine I don’t know about my brain, though.” Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s campaign chairwoman, said the president was “clearly making a joke and then said, ‘All kidding aside.’”
In the wake of Biden’s poor performance during CNN’s presidential debate last week, some Democrats have begun to call for the president to drop out of the race, leaving the White House scrambling to convince skeptics within the party and voters. In the days after, administration officials have provided confusing and conflicting explanations as they attempted to spin a performance that exacerbated voters’ concerns about Biden’s age.
Following the meeting, Govs. Wes Moore of Maryland, Kathy Hochul of New York and Tim Walz of Minnesota painted a positive picture of the meeting during a news conference, adding that Biden is “all in” and “in it to win it.”
In response to a reporter’s question, Walz dismissed any concerns about Biden’s age and health, saying the president is “fit for office.”
Speaking for themselves, some governors have been more vocal. Gov. Maura Healey of Massachusetts, though she did not speak during the Wednesday meeting with Mr. Biden, said during a Monday call with fellow governors about the situation that she had told Jeff Zients, the White House chief of staff, that the president’s political position was “irretrievable” after his disastrous debate performance, according to two people who were on the Monday call.
Mr. Biden has acknowledged to two allies that he knows he may not be able to save his candidacy for a second term if he can’t demonstrate his abilities to voters following the debate. He sought to reassure concerned campaign aides in a call on Wednesday before the meeting with the governors, saying he was in the race to stay.
But the fact that Mr. Biden began the conversation with the governors by declaring that he was continuing on left some participants feeling that any further discussion about the state of play was chilled.
Mr. Biden told a Milwaukee radio station in an interview made public Wednesday that he had “a bad night.” In the prerecorded interview with the radio host Earl Ingram, Mr. Biden added, “The fact of the matter is that I screwed up. I made a mistake.”
Mr. Biden also told the governors that he had been examined by his physician at some point in the days after the debate because of the cold he was suffering from and that he was fine, multiple people familiar with what took place said. Politico reported earlier on Mr. Biden’s checkup, which the White House said took place on Monday, was brief and wasn’t a full physical examination.
A White House spokesman, Andrew Bates, confirmed that Mr. Biden had seen the White House physician to check on the cold. But on Friday, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said the opposite, telling reporters that Mr. Biden had not had any kind of medical checkup since February.
