WASHINGTON — President Biden’s highly anticipated “big boy” press conference Thursday — his first formal solo press conference in Washington since 2022, where he will address increasing calls to bow out of the 2024 race — has been delayed by one hour and is now scheduled to begin around 6:30 p.m.
The new time means that clips of the 81-year-old president stumbling again — or exceeding expectations — likely won’t be ready in time for widely watched network evening news programs.
A White House official told The Post that the event was delayed “due to NATO schedule,” which also began later than expected Thursday.
Democrats who support Biden are anxious about the event at Washington’s Convention Center — which will be his first time formally facing a room full of reporters in Washington since November 2022 and his first extended Q&A session with journalists since his confused June 27 debate performance.
“I feel like the narrative needs to change. So either Dems need to get behind Biden or he needs to step aside. But we are losing time,” a Democratic source close to the White House told The Post.
“His press conference is another make-or-break moment.”
The source said there are no indications yet that Biden and his diminished inner circle are seriously considering him stepping aside as more Democrats in Congress ask him to do so in the wake of his disastrous CNN debate performance.
“I have heard folks around him are more dug in,” the source said. “It’s just hard to know because the circle is getting smaller.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has repeatedly referred to the event as a “big boy” press conference where many reporters will be called upon — with the phrase irking some fellow West Wing staffers, who view it as infantilizing the commander-in-chief.
Biden advocates hope he will provide a lucid and forceful defense of his performance and plans for another four-year term — as he did during his annual State of the Union speech to Congress in March — but fear that anything less will further sink his viability.
The president told Democratic governors at the White House last week that after the debate, he had decided to prevent recurrences of his on-stage issues by avoiding public events after 8 p.m.
Still, some Democrats predicted that even a solid performance wouldn’t reverse the damage already done.
“The notion that the President is going to be saved by this [upcoming Lester Holt] interview or that press conference misses the forest for trees,” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) tweeted Thursday.
“Neither the press conference tonight nor the NBC interview on Monday evening will offer the President the political salvation he seems to be seeking.”
Biden, who would be 86 at the end of a second term, has stumbled badly before at solo press conferences in Washington.
At a hastily arranged and brief Feb. 8 appearance before the press, Biden sought to challenge special counsel Robert Hur’s description of him as an “elderly man with a poor memory” — but instead only compounded questions about his fitness for office by confusing the leaders of Mexico and Egypt, denying that Hur’s report said he shared classified information with a ghostwriter, and incorrectly accusing Hur of raising his son’s death when it was Biden, in fact, who had done so.
Biden’s last formal solo press conference at the White House followed the 2022 midterm elections. He said he had a list of 10 reporters to call upon, but ended the event after calling on just nine following a gaffe in which he confused the Iraqi city of Fallujah and the then-Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Kherson.
The president also created an international firestorm by speaking imprecisely at a January 2022 press conference to mark his first full year as president — saying that NATO would respond differently if Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a “minor incursion” into Ukraine rather than a full invasion.
Officials in Kyiv said they feared Biden had given Putin a “green light” to invade, which he proceeded to do about a month later.
Although polls have long shown that an overwhelming percentage of voters believe Biden is too old for another term, Democratic officeholders have increasingly agreed following Biden’s catastrophic debate against former President Donald Trump, when the incumbent made puzzling remarks, including that he “finally beat Medicare.”
Rep. Hillary Scholten of Michigan on Thursday morning became the 10th House Democrat to publicly call for Biden to “step aside from the presidential race and allow a new leader to step up” — after Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont on Wednesday evening became the first Democrat from the upper chamber to ask Biden to call it quits, citing “valid questions” about his cognitive fitness.
Reps. Lloyd Doggett of Texas, Raul Grijalva of Arizona, Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, Mike Quigley of Illinois, Angie Craig of Minnesota, Adam Smith of Washington, Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, Pat Ryan of New York and Earl Blumenauer of Oregon previously asked Biden to exit the race.
Reps. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Mark Takano (D-Calif.) and Joseph Morelle (D-NY) reportedly said on a Sunday conference call that they want Biden to end his candidacy, but the trio have not publicly confirmed it and Nadler said Tuesday he supports Biden since he’s decided not to relinquish the nomination.
Actor George Clooney, who hosted a $30 million Los Angeles fundraiser for Biden in June, on Wednesday urged the president to step aside — reportedly after discussing his plan to do so with former President Barack Obama, who did not discourage Clooney.
“It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010,” Clooney wrote. “He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
Vice President Kamala Harris is the most likely replacement candidate should Biden step aside, though many of her critics doubt she would perform any better in the Nov. 5 election due to even lower approval ratings.