President Biden said on Thursday that no poll or person has told him that he cannot win the November general election after his debate performance last month.
Biden said at a solo press conference following the NATO Summit that seeing polling information that showed Vice President Harris would perform better against former President Trump than him would not cause him to step aside on its own.
When asked if he would step aside if his team showed him polls suggesting that, Biden said, "No, unless they came back and said there's no way you can win. They're not saying that. No poll says that."
He said he believes he would have an easier time winning than another candidate who would have to start from "scratch."
"I believe I'm the best qualified to govern, and I think I'm the best qualified to win," he said.
Biden is trying to assure Democrats following his dismal debate with Trump that he is up to the job of defeating the former president for reelection in November and serving another term as president himself. Since the debate, more than a dozen congressional Democrats have called on him to step aside as the party’s nominee.
Polling has not shown a total collapse for Biden in the past couple of weeks, and he has stayed within a few points of Trump in most surveys of the national polling and key battleground states. But Trump has slightly expanded his lead according to most of the polls that have come out recently, and the data has also shown significant doubts in Biden’s ability to continue in the race, including from members of his own party.
Biden questioned how much the polls can be trusted to be accurate and argued that while some polls show Trump ahead, others have shown him ahead. He added that he believes the polling is premature as the campaign will not truly heat up until after Labor Day, as it has in past elections.
"The campaign really hadn't even started. I mean it hasn’t started in earnest yet. Most of the time it doesn't start till after September, after Labor Day,” he said. “So a lot can happen.”
Democratic strategist David Axelrod said in response to Biden's comments that if he is to be believed, that means his staff are not being honest with him.
"If what he said at the end of his presser is true, it sounds like Biden's team has not been very candid with him about what the data is showing: the age issue is a huge and potentially insurmountable concern and his odds of victory are very, very slim," he said in a post on X.
