White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday that President Joe Biden is still struggling with a cold, 18 days after contracting the illness during his international trip.
Remarkably, despite a disastrous debate with Donald Trump that his staff partly attributed to the common disease, he has still not been examined by a doctor.
“He still has a cold,” she told DailyMail.com when asked about Biden’s health.
The White House has offered multiple, varying explanations for Biden’s poor performance in debates, including poor answering of questions and switching topics without engagement: he had a bad cold, was over-prepared for the debate and was not feeling well.
Biden himself added a new excuse to the mix when he blamed jet lag from his international travel for his performance. But the president was back in the country 12 days before the debate began, and Jean-Pierre had not mentioned the jet lag when she spoke to reporters on Tuesday.
“My mistake. I knew it,” she insisted when pressed about the jet lag. “I was focused on the cold.”
Jean-Pierre was questioned about Biden’s performance in the debate for most of her hour-long press conference on Wednesday.
“It’s the jet lag and also the cold,” she said of the matter.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday that President Joe Biden still has a cold
She also said the 80-year-old president has not undergone a medical examination since his annual medical check-up in February.
Biden’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, is traveling with him. He was seen by reporters at the president’s villa in Italy. O’Connor also traveled with Biden to the debate in Atlanta.
But the 81-year-old Biden “was not examined by the doctor,” Jean-Pierre said on the way to the debate.
“There’s a cold. There’s jet lag. Combine that — he continues to work day in and day out, around the clock, for the American people. Things happen,” she said of Biden’s debate performance.
A cold is a viral infection of the upper respiratory tract, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. It usually lasts less than a week.
Biden returned from a visit to the G7 in Italy on June 14. Before that, he was in France for the D-Day commemoration. The debate was on June 27.
“The fact is, I wasn’t very smart, you know. I decided to travel around the world a couple of times, travel through 100 time zones … for … the debate. I didn’t listen to my staff and I came back and almost fell asleep on stage,” Biden said Tuesday night of his debate performance. “That’s not an excuse, but it’s an explanation.”
But he left out the seven days he spent at Camp David before his showdown with Trump, spending the week with aides preparing for the debate.
Biden, however, rarely started before 11 a.m. and took a nap in the afternoon, the New York Times reported.
Jean-Pierre was strongly against the sleep report.
“Let me be very clear: This is a president who wakes up every morning and puts the American situation first… I’m not going to talk to anonymous sources,” she said.
And, she argued, Biden deserves credit for pushing through the debate despite his cold.
Jean-Pierre also denied a report that Biden privately told a key ally that he was considering whether or not to withdraw from the presidential race. The shocking admission points to the deplorable state of his candidacy.
Biden, coming off a disastrous debate last week, admitted he has only this weekend to convince voters he is mentally up to the task.
He will be in Madison, Wisconsin, on Friday, where he will sit down for an interview with ABC News. He will travel to Pennsylvania on Sunday.
“He knows that if he does two more events like this, we’ll be in a different situation by the end of the weekend,” the ally told The New York Times.
Jean-Pierre described the report as “absolutely not” true.
“He has a clear vision and he stays in the race,” she said.
Biden himself gathered for a meeting of his campaign team on Wednesday to give them a pep talk and tell them that he is staying in the race and going to win.
“Let me say this as clearly as I can, as simply and directly as I can: I’m running… nobody’s pushing me out. I’m not going away. I’m in this race until the end and we’re going to win,” he said.
President Joe Biden also blamed jet lag for his poor debate performance
Biden’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, has not examined him recently, the White House said
If Biden leaves the race with Donald Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris would be seen as the favorite to replace him. Biden and Harris had lunch at the White House on Wednesday.
Democrats fear Biden can no longer beat Trump in November. Even Biden aides needed reassurance, as more than two dozen lawmakers have expressed doubts about the president’s eligibility.
Reports are mounting that Biden is eyeing the exit door, as donors, lawmakers and top party officials worry the president is not ready to campaign. There is also frustration that Biden is waiting too long to get back out there and show himself as a strong, energetic leader.
“He was busy with his agenda, speaking directly to his supporters and spending time with his family,” Jean-Pierre said of the president’s schedule.
A major donor said TMZ that it is “only a matter of time” before Biden withdraws.
Another ally told CNN that Biden realizes the next few days are critical to whether he can salvage his candidacy, noting that he would have to accept: “It’s just not working.”
“He sees the moment. He has clear eyes,” the person said.
“What should happen is the polls should plummet, the fundraising should dry up, the interviews should go badly,” the person said. “He’s not aware of it.”
The White House is struggling to calm the storm of outrage over Biden’s debate performance, with Democratic lawmakers calling on the president to withdraw from the race and White House staff “freaking out.”
White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients held a general meeting at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday to cheer up the disillusioned staff and assure them that Biden remains the nominee.
During the call, he acknowledged that Biden did not perform well in last week’s debates, but he told his staff that he is a “great president” and urged them to “stick together.”
“He didn’t have a great night, but that was one night and we all know he’s a great president,” Zients said, according to sources.
He made three key points: keep your heads down and stay committed to the American people as the campaign handles the election; keep your heads up, because the administration has accomplished so much; and stick together.
The conversation lasted about 10 minutes. Zients did not answer questions but said concerned staffers should email him. He repeated Biden’s quote that if you get knocked down, you get back up.
“That’s what he’s doing and that’s what we all need to do: follow the president’s example,” he said.