The Biden campaign is working overtime to quell the overwhelming panic after the President’s disastrous debate performance — and even had party bigwigs set up a call with members to talk them off the ledge, sources said.
On Saturday — while Biden rubbed elbows with mega-donors in the Hamptons — the Democratic National Committee held the hastily put-together call led by Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodriguez and DNC chairman Jaime Harrison meant to calm fear and frustration.
“They are trying to minimize the debate as much as possible,” a source told The Post. “It was meant to indirectly dismiss any discussion.”
Adding, “It was matter of fact, we are moving forward.”
Invites to the call went out on Friday, following a performance that saw a stumbling Biden, 81, looking frail and discombobulated.
Over the course of 45 minutes, there was only a “passing reference to the debate,” in the form of a quote from a rally Biden did in North Carolina on Friday in which the President said, “I don’t walk as easily 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 I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth,” sources said.
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A spokesperson from the DNC tried to downplay the call, telling The Post that it was just another of its quarterly meetings in which Chair Harrison gave the latest on fundraising numbers and recapped the week.
That discussion included the debate, “when President Biden outlined a positive vision to drive progress and Donald Trump lied through his teeth and refused to accept the results of the election,” DNC’s Hannah Muldavin said.
But as pundits and countless news organizations, including the New York Times editorial board, are calling for Biden to step down, the party is holding the line.
The discussion was about moving the campaign forward, sources said.
“They were saying the energy is amazing. It was the standard talk you would give.”
But our source said that the call was “obviously thrown together last minute to stem any discontent from the debate.”
“They will try and treat it routinely, but it was not routine,” says the source.
Biden’s lackluster debate performance Thursday sent the Democratic establishment into a tailspin, with Former New York state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi of the Bronx and ex-Obama associate staff secretary Joel Wertheimer immediately taking to social media to urge the aging president to quit the race.
The octogenarian repeatedly froze and let slip a series of gaffes throughout the 90-minute debate — including saying his son Beau, who died from cancer in the US, “died in Iraq” and that he “beat Medicare.”
He also spoke in a soft, scratchy voice, which anonymous aides claimed was the result of a cold.
At the end of the debate, First Lady Jill Biden swept in to help her husband off the stage — a move that some viewers took as an embarrassing moment for the commander-in-chief.
Over half of debate watchers, however, came away with no confidence in Biden’s ability to lead the country as compared to his opponent, per a Schoen Cooperman Research released Saturday.
Fifty-one percent of 500 registered voters polled said Trump performed better than Biden — with slightly more than half of voters saying Biden’s alarming performance was worse than they expected.
Nearly three-quarters of voters said they left the debate “more concerned” about Biden’s “age and fitness to be president.”
