WASHINGTON - US President Joe Biden on July 11 mistakenly referred to Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky as "President Putin" before correcting himself at the Nato summit in Washington.
"And now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine, who has as much courage as he has determination, ladies and gentlemen, President Putin," Mr Biden said, referring to Mr Zelensky, before correcting himself.
"Going to beat President Putin, President Zelensky. I am so focused on beating Putin," Mr Biden said while correcting himself.
The room at the summit gasped when Mr Biden misidentified Mr Zelensky as Mr Putin.
The gaffe came shortly before a highly anticipated news conference where Mr Biden hopes to ease fellow Democrats’ fears that he no longer has the ability to beat Republican Donald Trump in the November election, or to lead the country for another four-year term.
So far, 13 of the 213 Democrats in the House and one of the Senate’s 51 Democrats have appealed publicly to the president to withdraw from the race.
During his solo news conference on July 11 evening, Mr Biden will have to respond to questions on a wide range of topics – including his fitness for another four years in the White House.
Mr Biden’s campaign has been on the ropes for two weeks, since his poor debate performance against Donald Trump, his 78-year-old Republican rival.
Top advisers met with Senate Democrats to try to quell further defections. His campaign argued that the debate has not dramatically shifted the race, even as it laid out a narrow path to re-election that acknowledged that it faced an uphill climb in many states he won in 2020.
Before the news conference, four more Democrats in the House of Representatives called on Mr Biden to end his campaign: Mr Brad Schneider of Illinois, Mr Greg Stanton of Arizona, Mr Ed Case of Hawaii, and Ms Hillary Scholten of Michigan.
“For our country’s sake, it is time for the President to pass the torch to a new generation of leaders,” Mr Stanton said in a prepared statement.
Others stopped short of calling for Mr Biden to drop out, even as they questioned his ability to lead the country.
“I doubt the President’s judgment about his health, his fitness to do the job, and whether he is the one making important decisions about our country, rather than unelected advisors,” Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez said in a statement.
None of the party’s leaders in Congress have called for Mr Biden to end his candidacy, though former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on July 10 declined to say he should stay in the race.
Some Senate Democrats said they were still uncertain about Mr Biden’s ability to win after meeting with Mr Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon and other top aides.
The campaign has commissioned a survey to test how Vice-President Kamala Harris would fare if she were to replace Mr Biden at the top of the ticket, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week found Ms Harris would fare no better than Mr Biden if she were the Democratic nominee, as both were statistically tied with Trump.
The New York Times reported that some longtime advisers were considering ways to convince him to drop his reelection bid, while NBC News reported that some campaign staffers thought he stood no chance of winning the election.
Congressional Democrats will be watching closely later this evening when Mr Biden fields questions from the White House press corps.
At his first formal solo news conference since November 2023, Mr Biden will have to speak on a wide range of topics - including likely questions on whether his doctors have found evidence of mental decline.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week found Mr Biden and Trump tied at 40 per cent each.
Other opinion polls have found Trump widening his lead over Mr Biden, and some strategists have warned that Trump stood a chance of winning reliably Democratic states like New Hampshire and Minnesota.
In their strategy memo, the campaign argued that it has always expected a close election and could win by focusing on three battleground states: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
If he won those states, along with others considered to be reliably Democratic, he would win 270 electoral votes – the bare minimum needed to secure the presidency. Mr Biden won 306 electoral votes in 2020.
The campaign characterised other battleground states he won in 2020 as “not out of reach.”
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