Anti-Biden rebellion escalates ahead of high-stakes press conference

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A number of Democratic lawmakers on Thursday called on Joe Biden to end his re-election campaign and let another Democrat take on Donald Trump, hours before the president was set to hold a highly anticipated press conference at the end of this week’s Nato summit.

The press conference will be a rare forum for Biden, who has held far fewer press conferences as president than any of his modern predecessors.

But it is also widely seen as a make-or-break moment for him. It comes as a crisis over Biden’s candidacy engulfs the Democratic party, and the White House and the president’s re-election campaign struggle to stem calls from lawmakers, influential donors and party operatives for him to step aside.

The lawmakers joining the explicit calls for Biden to step aside included House Democrats Hillary Scholten, Ed Case, Greg Stanton and Brad Schneider.

“For the good of our democracy, I believe it is time for him to step aside from the presidential race and allow a new leader to stand up,” Scholten said in a statement.

They joined at least a dozen other members of Congress who have said Biden should suspend his re-election bid.

But Hakeem Jeffries, the party’s leader in the House, told reporters on Thursday morning that he intended to speak with each of the more than 200 House Democrats before talking with his top team to plot a path forward.

“Throughout this week, as House Democrats, we have engaged in a process of talking to each other. Those conversations have been candid, comprehensive and clear eyed, and they continue,” Jeffries said.

Jeffries has confronted growing calls from within his caucus for the 81-year-old Biden to step aside as concerns mount that the president is ill-equipped to beat Donald Trump in November and serve another four years in the White House.

On Wednesday, his predecessor, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said Biden needed to make a decision on his future “quickly”, while actor George Clooney, a big Hollywood Democratic backer and donor, called on the president to drop out of the race too.

Many lawmakers are also concerned that Biden could weigh on congressional races and kill the Democratic party’s chance of taking back control of the House.

But Jeffries on Thursday insisted he remained bullish on the party’s chances at the ballot box, and his own chances of becoming the next Speaker of the House, saying: “House Democrats will win back control of the House of Representatives on November 5.”

Democratic donors told the Financial Times on Wednesday that funding for the party’s election campaign was now “drying up” because Biden remained on the ticket.

“We have yet to talk to anybody in the Senate, on the donor-side, or the House of Representatives that wouldn’t love to see another candidate,” said Democratic donor and investor Jeff Walker, a member of the Leadership Now Project that has called for Biden to end his campaign.

Lawmakers’ growing concerns come nearly two weeks after Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Trump sparked panic across the Democratic party, as influential donors and party operatives fretted that the president was not fit for a re-election campaign and another four-year term.

The White House and the Biden campaign have insisted that the president is committed to his re-election bid, defeating Trump and serving another term in the Oval Office.

Additional reporting by Alex Rogers and Steff Chávez in Washington