Joe Biden delivered a defiant speech on Friday evening in the battleground state of Michigan, firmly dismissing the doubt swirling around his survival as the Democratic presidential nominee.
Biden held a rally at a high school gymnasium in Detroit as part of his visit to the critical swing state that chose Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020. He walked on stage to audience chants of “don’t you quit” and addressed the speculation head on: “I am running, and we’re gonna win,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Throughout the speech, Biden reiterated his plans for a second term, including codifying abortion rights, signing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, ending medical debt, raising the minimum wage and banning assault weapons.
He also took direct aim at Trump, calling the former president and presumptive Republican nominee “a loser” and challenging his record on jobs and the economy.
“Donald Trump is the only president in American history, other than Herbert Hoover, who lost more jobs than he had when he came in,” Biden said. “That’s why I call him Donald ‘Herbert Hoover’ Trump.”
He also referenced Trump’s continuing legal battles, including his conviction over paying hush money to Stormy Daniels, his sexual abuse case involving E Jean Carroll, and the case over his handling of classified information.
“Do you really want to go back to the chaos of Donald Trump as president?” he asked the crowd, which responded with a booming “no!”
Biden also targeted Project 2025, a policy plan led by the Heritage Foundation, a rightwing thinktank. Trump has tried to disavow the project, which Democrats say shows his extremist agenda.
“Project 2025 is the biggest attack on our system of government and our personal freedom that has ever been proposed to this country,” Biden said, outlining its aims to criminalize the shipment of abortion medication, deny contraceptive coverage, make cuts to Medicare, and eliminate the Department of Education.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “It’s not a joke. It’s time for us to stop treating politics like entertainment and reality TV. Another four years of Donald Trump is deadly serious. Deadly serious.”
He ended his speech with a joke about his age, saying “I know I look 40”, and telling the crowd that “with age comes wisdom”.
“I know how to tell the truth, I know right from wrong, and I know I have demonstrated how to do this job,” he said. “We’re going to stop Donald Trump. Let’s get this done.”
The speech was initially received positively among pundits and voters, with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes saying it was “the best performance [Biden’s] given since the State of the Union”.
The reception will probably be welcomed by Biden’s teams, as calls in Washington for the 81-year-old president to quit intensified. The Democratic leader in the House of Representatives said he had discussed the issue with Biden on Thursday, after Biden’s press conference following the Nato summit.
In a letter to colleagues, Hakeem Jeffries of New York said discussions about Biden’s age and fitness for office had been “candid, clear-eyed and comprehensive”.
“On behalf of the House Democratic caucus,” he said, “I requested and was graciously granted a private meeting with President Joe Biden.
“That meeting occurred yesterday evening … I directly expressed the full breadth of insight, heartfelt perspectives and conclusions about the path forward.”
Biden’s response was not disclosed, nor details of Democratic “conclusions”. But as the letter was released, an 18th congressional Democrat said Biden should let someone else face Donald Trump in November.
The 19th Democrat to say Biden should go, Mike Levin of California, was reported by Politico to have told the president so to his face on Friday, during a virtual meeting with the Congressional Hispanic caucus. Levin then stated his position publicly.
Politico also quoted a “pro-Biden Democrat who attended the meeting” as saying the president “sounded very lucid, sharp, engaged”.
There was further worrying news for Democrats when the New York Times reported that so long as Biden remains the nominee, major donors will put on hold “roughly $90m in pledged donations”.
The Sunrise Movement also called for Biden to quit. Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the youth-led climate-focused activist group, said she was “concerned Joe Biden isn’t in a position to mobilise young voters and win”.
As Biden headed for Detroit, the capital remained abuzz. At the Nato summit on Thursday, Biden spoke assertively and showed his foreign policy experience but also made embarrassing slips, introducing Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine as “President Putin” and referring to Kamala Harris, his vice-president, as “Vice-President Trump”.
Trump seized on that, posting on social media: “Crooked Joe begins his ‘Big Boy’ press conference with, ‘I wouldn’t have picked Vice-President Trump to be vice-president, though I think she was not qualified to be president.’ Great job, Joe!”
Biden had appeared to say: “Look, I wouldn’t have picked Vice-President Trump to be vice-president [if] I think she’s not qualified to be president.”
Related: Gaffes, stumbles and missteps – for Biden, the cracks were showing
Online, Biden fired back, posting: “By the way: Yes, I know the difference. One’s a prosecutor, and the other’s a felon.”
Trump, 78 and facing questions about his own cognitive fitness, was convicted on 34 charges arising from hush-money payments to an adult film star. He faces 54 other criminal charges, concerning election subversion and retention of classified information, and was fined millions of dollars in civil cases over business fraud and defamation arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.
There was good news for Biden on Friday: a poll showing him improving since the disastrous debate against Trump in Atlanta that pitched Democrats into crisis.
“Biden actually gained a point since last month’s survey, which was taken before the debate,” wrote Domenico Montanaro of NPR, which carried out the poll with PBS and Marist. “He leads Trump 50%-48% in a head-to-head matchup. But Biden slips when third-party options are introduced, with Trump [leading] 43%-42%.”
But Politico noted telling dissonance in responses to Biden’s Nato performance. One unnamed Biden aide said the president exceeded expectations and had some great lines. A Democratic aide said Biden had “lowered the bar … until it’s on the floor”.
Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, the dean of the Congressional Black caucus, told NBC that Biden “sometimes mangles words and phrases but all of that is almost natural for people who grew up stuttering”.
He added: “He has one of the best minds that I have ever been around … and so I would hope that we would focus on the substance of this man … and how he has run this country.
Asked “Is this the same Joe Biden that we saw four years ago?”, Clyburn said: “No!”
“I’m not the same Jim Clyburn that I was four years ago and in 10 days I’ll be 84. But I’m a bit wiser than I was before … It’s biblical. When I became a man I put away childish things. Joe Biden has put away childish things because he has become a man. His opponent [Trump] is still a child.”
The Associated Press contributed reporting
