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President Joe Biden on Friday admitted what the nation already knew: he bungled his first debate against former President Donald Trump.
"I don't debate as well as I used to," Biden told supporters at a rally in North Carolina.
To be fair, even Vice President Kamala Harris admitted that her running mate got off to "a slow start."
Biden conceded that his debate skills aren't the only thing that has diminished.
"I know I'm not a young man, to state the obvious," Biden said, his voice growing louder. "I don't walk as easy as I used to. I don't speak as smoothly as I used to. I don't debate as well as I used to."
But the president remained emphatic that he remains the best option to defeating Trump this November.
"But I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth," he said. I know right from wrong. And I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done. And I know like millions of Americans know, when you get knocked down you get back up."
Biden reiterated his long-held belief that he's up to the job.
"I would not be running again if I did not believe with all my heart and soul that I can do this job," he said.
During a disastrous Thursday night debate, Biden gave raspy and sometimes meandering responses. At one point, Trump even mocked him stating, "I really don't know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don't think he knows what he said either."
It wasn't just Republicans.
After the debate, Democrats began sounding the alarm and reconsidering whether they could get the president to step aside or even push him off the ballot. Biden's performance, as Democrats pointed out, was particularly disastrous because it underlined the biggest concern Americans already had about his standing as the nation's oldest president seeking reelection to a term that would leave him at 86 years old at the end of it.
"There are going to be discussions about if he should continue," David Axelrod, a former senior Obama White House advisor, said on CNN following the debate.
A snap poll of debate watchers also proclaimed Trump the clear winner. According to the CNN poll, 67% of viewers thought the former president won, compared to just 33% for Biden.
No current major elected Democrats have called on the president to step down. Senior Democrats and others in the party offered mostly curt responses to reporters on Capitol Hill when asked about Biden's standing.
"From a performance standpoint it wasn't great, but from a values standpoint, it far outshone the other guy," former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters, per The New York Times.
As if Biden's rally speech wasn't a clear enough message to anxious Democrats, the president walked off the stage with Tom Petty's defiant hit, "I Won't Back Down" playing in the background.
