President Joe Biden, center right, and first lady Jill Biden, right, arrive on Marine One with granddaughters Natalie Biden, from left, and Finnegan Biden, at East Hampton Airport, Saturday, June 29, 2024, in East Hampton, N.Y. WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s reset after his disastrous debate performance is looking more like a return to business as usual.
For all of the public efforts to shift the focus back to Trump, though, there have been private discussions on what more Biden could do to counteract what Americans saw during the debate, when he gave convoluted answers, trailed off at times, occasionally stared blankly and sounded raspy-voiced.
An ad released Monday was called “I Know” using clips from Biden’s post-debate North Carolina rally, where he said: “When you get knocked down, you get back up.” She added that, tactically, the campaign has responded by promoting Biden’s strong speech in North Carolina on Friday and by continuing to post strong fundraising numbers. Palmieri also said Biden might also want to sit for more interviews to continue to show that the debate was an anomaly.
Rebecca Katz, a strategist who worked with Democratic Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman’s winning campaign in 2022, saw potential parallels in Fetterman’s comeback from a shaky debate performance after he had a stroke. Biden expressed interest in doing at least one interview. At a Saturday fundraiser in East Hampton, New York, Biden said he had spoken with the broadcaster Howard Stern, who had interviewed him in April, where he answered open-ended questions mostly about his early years.