Biden tells ally he is weighing whether to withdraw from 2024 race: Live updates

Senior Democrats scrambled to prevent the West Virginia senator from publicly calling for Biden to stand down on national television after the president’s dismal debate performance.

Manchin, who filed as an independent after leaving the Democrats in May but still caucuses with the party, voiced growing concerns on whether the commander-in-chief was fit to continue leading the United States and was prepared to go public before Democrats caught wind of his intentions and began bombarding him with calls as part of a “full-court press” to dissuade him, according to The Washington Post.

Former president Barack Obama has reportedly privately raised concerns about Joe Biden’s path to re-election after his shaky debate performance, a sharp deviation from his public comments.

Despite boosting his old deputy on social media, Obama has told allies behind closed doors he is worried about Democrats’ ability to defeat Trump in November and has warned Biden in recent months about the challenges ahead, according to The Washington Post.

A new poll from CBS News shows that Trump has taken a slight lead against Biden after trailing him last month.

CBS surveyed 2,826 registered voters in the days after Thursday’s Atlanta debate, with its resulting poll concluding that 51 per cent of voters would pick Trump compared to 48 per cent backing Biden.

The numbers are a reversal from June when 50 per cent of voters said that they would pick the Democrat and 49 per cent said they would pick the Republican, which came shortly after a jury in New York found the 45th president guilty on 34 criminal charges of falsifying business records as part of a conspiracy to corruptly influence the 2016 election.

Trump led Biden 51 per cent to 48 per cent in battleground states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The NYT is reporting that Joe Biden has told “a key ally” that he may not be able to continue with his 2024 campaign if he cannot change the public’s mind about his health and wellbeing with his next few appearances, the first indication from the president that he understands the seriousness of the damage done by his debate disaster last week.

Biden has an interiew with George Stephanopoulos on ABC News scheduled on Friday and campaign stops in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin upcoming.

“He knows if he has two more events like that, we’re in a different place,” the newspaper’s source said.

White House spokesman Andrew Bates has wasted no time in rubbishing the story, commenting: “That claim is absolutely false. If The New York Times had provided us with more than seven minutes to comment, we would have told them so.”

Another Biden campaign spokesman has told The Independent simply: “It’s wrong.”

Here’s the very latest from Alex Woodward.

The president’s campaign raised more than Trump in June, despite his disastrous debate performance last week.

The Biden team raised $127m last month, compared to his Republican rival’s $111.8m, according to announcements from the two campaigns on Tuesday.

The president’s June fundraising haul includes $38m in the four days after the Atlanta debate, which is at least encouraging for Democrats.

President Biden’s debate performance on Thursday sent Democrats into a tailspin of panic.

But while the party has an abundance of young talent, any ambitious politician who comes forward to say Biden should step aside immediately risks becoming a pariah.

That may be why, for the time being, only a single sitting Democrat has spoken out about replacing the president at the top of the ticket.

Eric Garcia reports on what his potential successors have been saying instead.

Don’t ever change, Marianne.

“President Biden deserves our respect, and our compassion, and our gratitude,” she says in a new five-minute video statement posted to X.

“But the debate on Thursday night made it very clear that the Democrats need a new nominee on the ballot in November.”

The former self-help guru, 72, is once more throwing her hat in the ring and calling on the party to “recalibrate” and hold an open nomination at its convention in Chicago in August.

And you thought Joe Biden was having a rough week…

He says the accusations are “garbage” but that he is not a “church boy” (?) and had a “rambunctious youth”.

The GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee has taken his revenge against the chair of the House Freedom Caucus in a primary that proves his endorsement is still a kingmaker within the Republican Party.

The race in Virginia’s 5th district was called Tuesday afternoon, with all 24 localities reporting.

Virginia’s Department of Elections declared that John McGuire, a retired Navy SEAL and state senator, won the primary with 31,209 votes compared to representative Bob Good’s 31,583, creating a margin of just 374 votes.

The results took days to come in as the race remained on a knife edge and Good, who earned Trump’s animosity by backing Florida governor Ron DeSantis in the primaries, has already said that he will ask for a recount.

Here’s more from John Bowden and Eric Garcia.

The company behind Trump’s line of vulgar “Never Surrender” high-top sneakers has filed a lawsuit alleging trademark and copyright infringement against a number of retailers it accuses of marketing and selling knockoff versions of the shoes online.

And one of their customers appears to be MAGA favourite Lauren Boebert!