President Biden’s top campaign advisors both weighed in on Friday to comment on widespread speculation surrounding the 2024 presidential race.
The first clarification came from Campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, who left no room for question during an interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“The president’s in this race,” O’Malley Dillon told the hosts. “You’ve heard him say that time and time again, and I think we saw on display last night exactly why, because Donald Trump is not going to offer anything new to the American people. He’s the same person he was in 2020. He’s the same person he was at the debate stage.”
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Jen O’Malley Dillon, a top Biden campaign advisor, follows behind President Joe Biden, not pictured, on the South Lawn of the White House before boarding Marine One in Washington, DC. (Getty Images)
O’Malley Dillon made clear there was no question that Biden is “more committed than ever to beat Donald Trump” — pushing back yet again on weeks and weeks of leaks and speculation claiming the president was close to pulling out of the race.
“We believe in this campaign we are built for the close election that we are in, and we see the path forward,” O’Malley Dillon continued. “The president is the leader of our campaign and of the country, and he is clearly in our impression, and what we’ve built, and in our engagement with voters, he’s the best person to take on Donald Trump and prosecute that case and present his vision versus what we saw last night.”
This rock-solid statement of commitment was slightly complicated just hours later by Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del. — co-chair of Biden’s re-elections campaign — who said the president is “weighing what he should weigh.”
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President Joe Biden speaks at the 115th NAACP National Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. (AP Photo/David Becker)
Coons told the press during a panel at the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Security Forum that Biden is considering “who is the best candidate to win in November and to carry forward the Democratic Party’s values and priorities in this campaign.”
He noted that Biden attended the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Washington, D.C., this month after a “very bad debate performance” and that the president “Did a press conference. Did campaign events. Did campaign rallies.”
“And there are folks still saying he is not strong enough or capable enough to be our next president,” he continued. “I disagree.”
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Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., a top Biden ally, told the press that the president is “weighing what he should weigh” at the moment but later clarified that he is “with [Biden] 100%.” (Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
According to Coons, “There is a lot of concern and anxiety about this because the stakes are so significant. The consequences of this election are profound.”
Coons walked back this somewhat shaky comment just hours later with a post to social media professing total support for Biden’s re-election effort.
“I fully support the President. He’s told me he’s in it to win it,” Coons wrote on social media platform X. “I’m with him 100% because I know he can beat Trump just like he did last time.”