Biden Debate Aftermath, SCOTUS Immunity Decision, Hurricane's Threat Rises
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It's Monday, July 1st. Right now on CNN This Morning, President Biden fighting to stay in the race as Democrats struggle to decide whether they're better off with or without him. Plus, Decision Day. The Supreme Court expected to rule today on Donald Trump's claim of absolute presidential immunity. The Caribbean bracing for Hurricane Beryl, now a potentially deadly Category 3 storm. And how does this happen? A space rocket crashing into the mountains after it was launched by accident.

All right. 6 a.m. here in Washington. A live look at the White House in a new phase of the campaign to win the right to live there. Good morning, everyone. I'm Casey Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us on this Monday morning. Keep fighting. That's the advice for President Biden. That's coming from his family after a weekend of reflection at Camp David. According to one presidential adviser, support from the first lady and other family members is, quote, unequivocal.

Privately, the family's blaming the president's debate team for his disastrous performance Thursday night. And there apparently could be firings. Still, many allies and party insiders want Biden to bow out. Well, they won't say it. They won't put their name to it. There is one Democrat who knows what the president is going through. He says there's this is no time to hit the panic button.

Biden is one and Trump is still zero. And he's the only person that's ever beaten Trump. And I really believe that Joe Biden will do that again, despite all of the Democrats wetting the bed over that kind of thing. The Trump campaign, of course, riding a wave of post-debate momentum. Senator J.D. Vance, who is in the running to be Trump's vice president, insisting that Republicans just don't care who Trump faces in November.

I actually don't care if Joe Biden is the Democratic nominee because Donald Trump is the Republican nominee and the contrast between Republican policies under Donald Trump and whoever the Democrats ultimately end up with is very powerful.

Our panel's here. Molly Ball, senior political correspondent at The Wall Street Journal, former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams, Megan Hayes, a former special assistant to President Biden, and Matt Gorman, former senior advisor to Tim Scott's presidential campaign. Welcome all. Molly Ball, I actually want to start with you because I want to try to capture the big picture of where we stand right now. And you write this in The Wall Street Journal. The fallout from last week's presidential debate has thrust the Democratic Party into a spiraling crisis.

Yet many in the party view the current reckoning as sadly inevitable, the product of years of defensive refusal by the president and his protective inner circle to acknowledge the decline in Biden's public presentation that has long been obvious to voters. And you quote a Democratic operative who says the shocking thing is that people engaged in this deception or delusion or both are

for so long. What else are you hearing about how this is playing out here? Because I do think that you capture here what everyone feels, which is we knew that his age was an issue, but to actually see it this way when so many people will deny, deny, deny to you that this is happening at all, it feels like whiplash. Yeah. Well, the word that I kept hearing from so many people who are involved in the highest levels of democratic politics

was gaslighting. There was a feeling like people are tired of being gaslit and told that they cannot believe what they see with their own eyes and ears. And it was so readily apparent on that debate stage that it sort of can't be denied anymore and now has been forced out into the open and has to be dealt with.

I don't think anybody is surprised that the first move is to circle the wagons and try to fight it out. The question is, does that prove sustainable? Can they sustain that position? Or are too many people now in their own party going to say, no, I'm sorry, I can't keep doing this, I can't keep saying this, we need to make a change. And that is the phase we're going through right now, is they are going to see if they can pull this off.

or if the world of democratic politics is sort of going to collectively say this isn't cutting it. Yeah, so Megan Hayes, you have the unfortunate reality of joining us as a Biden insider on this Monday after the Thursday night performance. And we're just going to put up a couple things that clearly there are no elected officials out there yet, Democrats, elected Democrats out there saying that he should bow out.

of the race. I think our colleague here at CNN, Paul Begala, said that the first Democratic politician to do that would basically be shot. It would be political suicide. But here was the New York Times editorial board saying to serve his country, President Biden should leave the race. James Carville says behind the curtain, the Biden oligarchy will decide the fate. We press Carville on whether he thinks Biden will be off the ticket. He said he thinks so.

And he invoked a famous quote by the late economist Herb Stein, which Carville paraphrased as, that which can't continue won't. There was Maureen Dowd who said very simply, he's being selfish. He's putting himself ahead of this country. He's surrounded by opportunistic enablers. And he has created a reality distortion field where we're told not to believe what we have plainly seen. Thank you for having me today. It's really great. As an opportunistic enabler was the last word, what?

Look, the president's extremely resilient. This is not the first time that he's been in a situation where everyone has counted him out. We were in the same spot in 20 during the primaries. I mean, he got fifth in Iowa. Like, this is not unusual for him. So, look, I've got to be candid with you. I actually interviewed him in South Carolina right after he came off that horrible New Hampshire loss, right? He pulled up stakes. He sat down with me. We talked for, I think, nearly 20 minutes on live TV. The guy that I talked to that night, he's not the same guy that was on the debate stage.

And he's not the person who's on the debate stage is not the same person who showed up in North Carolina the next day. So what happened on the debate stage? I don't know. I wasn't there. He just needs to spend the next 20, 120 something days proving that that was the anomaly and that North Carolina and the person you talk to is not. I mean, he is in an uphill battle without question. I just don't think that people should be so quick to count him out. I just he's a very resilient person. He's done a lot for this country and has a vision for the next four years. So I just it's.

I totally understand. It's totally fair to have these conversations. I just think that people should not count the president out. This is not the first time. On the count out point, totally fair point. It's a long campaign and so on. I think the challenge here is that what we saw in the debate stage confirmed that which people are already concerned about the president. It's as if

you know, if George W. Bush in 04 literally had pulled out a bong on stage and started smoking, the fact is people thought Bush was a frat boy goofing around and had to overcome that perception. Whether any of us like it or not. Sorry. Took a second. Took a second. I'm slacking now. No, but do what you see what I'm saying. But the point is, whether we like it or not, we all have public perceptions, uh,

that might or might not track with reality. And the burden that Joe Biden carries is the public thinks he's old. Even if he's running against a guy who's 78 years old, people think Joe Biden's old. And any performance that sort of affirms that is going to be hard to overcome. But he is old. No one's disputing that. And I just think that the voters will decide, right? So the voters are going to decide whether or not they think he can do the job or not.

us sitting here talking about it doesn't really make a difference. So it's the voters in Wisconsin and Michigan and Arizona. And those are the people he needs to go talk to and he needs to prove to them that he can do the job. And the voters, in a way, were ahead of the curve on this. I mean, I think the voters, if you look at the polls instinctively,

said, you know, something's not right here. Whether it's the media writ large, some of the pundits, elites, somebody's not playing totally straight with us on this. I mean, we sat here about a month ago when the Wall Street Journal kind of published that long story detailing a lot of what we saw the other night. And Democrats acted writ large like it was written in crayon, like it was totally...

totally made up. And it was really what we saw was confirmed. And we now can, it's hard to hide behind that. And so the idea that it's, you know, it's too late now or we should have had this conversation a year ago. No, the whole point was Democrats as a party wouldn't have this conversation a year ago, two years ago, three years ago. That's how we got here.

And the person winning in all of this is Donald Trump, who stood on a stage and put out patent falsehoods after falsehood, falsehood after falsehood for an hour and a half. Now, some of that is on President Biden. There's a guy there who could have. But the simple fact is, you know, Trump's getting a bit of a free pass in all of this. We've got to bring this to a close. But, Megan, the one thing I keep coming back to is that the

The president has focused on and said repeatedly that Donald Trump is a fundamental threat, not just to our country right in this moment, but to our democracy in the long term. Is there anything, if it becomes clear to him that he just cannot beat Donald Trump, that would cause him to reevaluate?

I don't believe in the president's heart he would be running if he did not think he could beat Donald Trump. I don't think that has changed in his heart. He is a very, I mean, he, as you know, in 20, when he entered the race, this was very important to him. And he is, he is a person who stands on principles and morals. If it was not in his heart that he could beat Donald Trump, he would not be in this race. Yeah.

All right, up next here, we have this other major, major story today. A ruling from the Supreme Court on presidential immunity set to come down at 10 a.m. Plus, Senator Chris Coons joins us to talk about President Biden's state of mind and his decision to stay in the race. Plus, devastating flooding in the Southwest. This is one of five things you have to see this morning.

I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast. What are some of the social service agencies that have supported you and your family growing up? That's Dr. Robert Waldinger. He's a psychiatrist, a professor, and a Zen master. What kind of relationships actually help us maintain happiness? And what should we do in those moments where we have setbacks and things that don't work out? Listen to Chasing Life, streaming now, wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, just a few hours from now, the Supreme Court set to hand down their final opinions of this term, which means that they will have to finally resolve the question of whether former President Trump can claim immunity in his federal election subversion case, which, of course, touches on his actions before and during the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Trump's main argument is that he cannot be held criminally responsible for anything that he did while he was in office because they were

official acts as president. Uh, Elliot Williams, let's walk through what the options may be when this opinion comes down. What are we all going to be scrambling to read in this opinion as those interns run it out to us? As they run it out. So I think based on how oral argument met, it seems that there's a majority on the Supreme court that wants to find that some acts of the president are immune from prosecution. That's probably acts that were committed or done in the president's official capacity. Uh,

sending troops, for instance, into battle. There's another sphere, I think, of conduct that will be seen as not immune from prosecution, things carried out in the president's personal capacity. Now, the court could have decided, and they can decide, we think these are official acts, these other acts are not official. It appears that they're not going to do that. It appears, and this is all based on what a majority of the justices were saying in oral argument, that they're going to send it back to the trial court to have hearings to figure out which

acts fall into each bucket. And so the bottom line for that is that it will delay any trial for Trump in this January 6th situation until after the election? It will delay any trial for Trump after the January 6th election. Now, something we've talked about on this program is the legal system exists outside of the political calendar, and it takes a long time to have hearings. Now, many voters see it as important to have a decision on this prior to Election Day, but that's simply not what the Supreme Court, I think, cares about.

for better or for worse. It's a choice that they're making. They are choosing to take as long as they are and to kick it down and so on. However, it's not their obligation to rule on anything prior to a political deadline. Yeah. I mean, but do you think Americans view that as like, as a

Do they view it as plausible that the Supreme Court is above politics? No, they do not in any way regard it as plausible the Supreme Court is above politics. And considering that the Supreme Court has an approval rating now that rivals roughly what Congress's is, it's pretty low. People don't have a high opinion of the Supreme Court. People see the Supreme Court as unethical, not

policing themselves in an effective way, not burdened by politics and so on. Of course the public holds the Supreme Court accountable for questions like this. And like I said, it is still a political choice to rule in the manner that they're doing now. They can wash their hands a little bit and say that, well, no, we're not stepping in an election. We're not putting a thumb on the scale, but in effect they are. And that's where we are. It's from court today. Yeah.

That's where we are. All right, stick with CNN. Our special coverage begins at 10 a.m. Eastern. It's going to be anchored by Jake Tapper, Anderson Cooper, and Kaitlin Collins. Don't miss it. I'll be joining as well. All right, coming up next, an update on Hurricane Beryl as it takes aim at the Caribbean this morning and a scary scene in Texas. An 18-wheeler drove right into somebody's living room? Yikes.

All right, 22 minutes past the hour. Five things you have to see this morning. A Chinese rocket crashing into the mountains after it was accidentally launched during a ground test. Officials say the rocket detached from its launch pad because of structural failure. There were no injuries reported.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews blocking a highway and clashing with police to protest Israel's new mandatory military service ruling. Israel's Supreme Court recently ordered the government to begin drafting ultra-Orthodox Jewish men into the Israeli army. In South Texas, the driver of an 18-wheeler is dead after his truck veered off the road and into a home. The home is for sale. No one is currently living there. The driver's cause of death has not been released.

Residents of New Mexico waking up to more extreme flooding this morning. Water levels reaching up to six feet high in some city streets. The state's National Guard has been called in to help after rescuers were unable to reach some of the victims.

All right, take a look at this. A very patient sheriff's deputy in eastern Oregon waiting for a group of baby skunk siblings to cross the road. In a post on Facebook, the Baker County Sheriff's Office says the deputy gave the hardworking mama plenty of space, smart, while she was trying to wrangle...

her babies. That's actually extremely adorable. Okay. This morning, the Caribbean bracing for Hurricane Beryl. It is now a Category 3 storm. The National Hurricane Center says the storm weakened overnight but still warns of potentially catastrophic wind damage as Beryl heads across the windward islands later on this morning. Our meteorologist Elisa Rafa tracking all of it for us this morning. Elisa, good morning.

Good morning. Yeah, it's a Category 3 hurricane right now, but it's only come down just a little bit in that center intensity because we are kind of resetting and changing the structure of the hurricane a little bit. That also means that the wind field has gotten fatter, so more of these islands could see these hurricane force and tropics.

storm force winds and we do expect that intensity to come back up a little bit more. So here's a look at it and you can see what I'm talking about with the eye wall kind of resetting itself a little bit, getting a little bit more clouded. But we've got some of the outer bands already coming into some of these islands like Barbados and Granada. Category 3 hurricane with 100

and 20 mile per hour winds sitting east and southeast there of Granada. Seeing some of these showers starting to get into some of these outer bands lashing as we look towards the Barbados radar here. Winds have already gusseted up to 60 miles per hour in Barbados. 43 mile per hour sustained winds right now. The core of that eye wall could create even storm surge up to six to nine feet. Rain totals are looking at some three to six inches of rain that could cause some problems on these islands.

There it goes with the intensity coming back up to a category four. And then it continues to scrape a lot of these islands here in the Caribbean Sea, eventually making it to Mexico later this week. All right, Elisa Rafa for us with that update. Elisa, thank you very much. Coming up next, a candidate arrested for allegedly using a tarantula as a weapon. Well, that's fun. Plus, Stena Bash is here to talk about the dilemma facing Democrats after President Biden's debate disaster.

I'm for Biden-Harris in this campaign. The president has done a really good job and he deserves a second term. I'm with Joe Biden. Joe Biden's decision to go forward is a decision that we will all embrace. I am all in in supporting President Biden. I'm not so cynical as to believe that the American people are going to choose a president based on a 90-minute debate.

Top Democrats sticking by President Biden this weekend despite that dismal debate performance that unleashed a wave of panic throughout the party with nearly half of Democratic voters now saying that President Biden should step aside and let someone else replace him at the top of the Democratic ticket. Party leaders, though, rejecting that possibility.

Is there even a mechanism that you think would work if President Biden did decide to step aside? You know, the campaign says that it would cause weeks of chaos and internal food fighting. Well, again, there's nothing as well as just as Joe Biden getting up and taking the ball over the finish line. Something else could be chaotic. The question is,

Joe Biden's decision to go forward is a decision that we will all embrace because of the record he has and the performance that will come with it. And joining our panel now is CNN's chief political correspondent, the co-host of CNN's State of the Union and the host of Inside Politics, also the moderator of Thursday's debate, Dana Bash. Dana, good morning. Thank you so much for being here. So you had also on your program the...

person who is possibly the one man who could call Joe Biden and say, hey, you need to step down out of this. And that is Jim Clyburn, who also saved his initial bid in 2020 when he when Biden went down to South Carolina. Let's watch a little bit of what Clyburn had to say to you also.

Take into account the record. Yes, it was a bad performance. I've been around these things. I've been a part of debate preparation before. And I know when I see what I call preparation overload. And that's exactly what was going on the other night.

So he's essentially saying that the prep was bad for the president. What have you been hearing as this story has rolled on? There doesn't seem to yet be a final answer, although the family certainly has circled the wagons. That's key. What we just heard from Nancy Pelosi, from Congressman Clyburn, from all of the other Democrats that you have been showing, that is the epitome of circling the wagons. And that matters because...

the initial reaction

was obviously a shock, but also the sort of stack of newspaper editorials in important newspapers for Joe Biden in particular. - It said... - The New York Times, in the swing state of Georgia, the Atlanta, Georgia Constitution. But we all know, you know, Megan, better than all of us, it's the family that matters the most to him. And because it is about the country, it is about, they argue, democracy,

but it is also about their father, their grandfather, their husband, their brother. And that was a, I mean, can you imagine watching that moment as that person being your family member? So that is one of the many reasons why this meeting with the family, even though it was pre-planned, a photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz,

Which is a bit of an odd choice. Well, they were doing... I realize it was planned well before this. It was planned well before, and she was doing portraits because they, just real quick, my understanding is that they had planned to do it this past weekend because everybody's in town for the 4th of July. That's the explanation. But obviously they talked about it, and they said, we're with you. Yeah. Megan, take us kind of inside the family situation.

here. I mean, I realize like if Joe Biden had every time he had a bad time of it, if he had stepped off the stage, like he would have been gone in 1988, right? When he was first running for president and that didn't go so well for him. But is there a point where this shifts for them? And if so, what is it? Look, I

- Look, I think with the family, they decided to run as a family in 20. They had a family meeting as they talked about after, I think George Bush's funeral. And they've talked about that publicly that that's when they decided to run. This is always gonna be part of their family. He is the head of their family and he relies deeply on their support.

I don't think it's going to shift unless Joe Biden doesn't think he can beat Donald Trump. And I don't think that that will ever come today and he will let the voters decide. He felt that way in 20 and he will feel that way this time. I just, I don't see a world in which he does not want to take this to the voters to decide. Can I just add two things that I'm hearing and what we saw over the weekend with the interviews that I did and others are a critical part of this. The things that they're watching right now, like hawks,

are donors to see if the money dries up. So far, they claim it hasn't. We'll see. But maybe most importantly, real polls that come out after the voters have had a chance to consume and to digest what they saw. If it looks like the

the bottom fell out, or even close to that, there will be different conversations. And that was told to me by people very close to this process. They admitted it, which is why you saw an effort, a war room, like I have never seen in Biden land. I don't know about you. I have never seen it the way that they kicked into high gear afterwards to

to try to stop the bleeding. Along those lines, this might be the first presidential election, certainly in modern history, where both candidates this far out have such universal name recognition. So the idea that someone's getting a big bump

or a big fall, even from a disastrous debate before him. Who knows if, you know, people, Biden hemorrhages support from that. Well, and I mean, I think that that underscore, your point underscores that if there were a huge shift in the polls, it would be that much more significant. I mean, Matt Gorman, let me just bring you in here because we can also put up

Look, if President Biden, we've been talking a lot about Biden, what he's going to do. Were he to step aside, Democrats would have to find somebody else, right? That is not, I mean, I can say that sentence in three seconds or less. That would be an incredibly messy process. And we can put up, you know, there has been head-to-head polling, Biden versus Trump, Harris versus Trump, Buttigieg,

you can see going on down like biden versus trump is at the top of the list now of course we can argue many of these people do not have nearly the name recognition of a president biden but this is what helps and you can see the in the center that's uh kind of the the undecideds or the don't knows right there they get bigger kind of as that as that chart goes on down um for republicans when we we saw jd vance came out and said i don't care we don't care who they run against

How do how's the Republican world looking at what Biden might do here? Two points to this. The whole reason we have the June debate, why this whole thing started was in many ways, I think the Biden campaign felt they were a little bit like on a glide path to being, you know, kind of down about three points. They need someone to shake up the race.

So even just maintaining the status quo in many respects wasn't the whole part point of the strategy in the first place if you asked a month ago. They needed to shake this up, not just maintain. Secondly, I think it's also the tough part is

just stating the obvious, there is no reasonable way you can bypass Kamala Harris, who is already in the ticket, who has the legal right to the money raised by Joe Biden. And also, I mean, let's face it, in Democratic politics, you cannot bypass the first African-American, the first woman to be elected vice president. There's simply no way. Can you, I'm sorry, can you just put that back up? I'm sorry to produce your show. No, you're fine.

One of the things that we have to not overlook here, Biden campaign shares polling data on other Democrats. I mean, can you imagine? This is part of their... No, but this is... But it is true. That was part of their strategy. It was the... Can you imagine a world in which the political operation is so...

scrambling so much, I would even say desperate, to stop everybody from freaking out that you're putting out internal polling on other people to show, oh yeah, you think it's bad with our guy? What it's going to be with the other people? Including their own vice president. Yeah. Their own vice president. I mean, the list of

all of these other Democrats, which they had in their back pocket. Amazing. Now, Matt, along the lines of your point, I'm curious as to, of that list of people, including Joe Biden, who scares Republicans? Like, who? Any of them? Is there anybody? Do any of them, are they afraid of J.B. Pritzker or Gavin Newsom or the vice president? I'll tell you what, if you can throw that one more time. I'll tell you why. Because look,

After Harris, I kind of discount most of them because they're all hovering on 43, 44%. In my mind, that is you are a generic Democrat. Well, nobody knows who they are yet, right? The name ID isn't high, right? People aren't being, you know, that J.D. Pritzker versus Josh Shapiro. They're really weighing this. You are a generic Democrat, and that's how people respond to the polls. Harris is different, but there's a whole other host of issues there. Yeah. Yeah.

Dana Bash, I mean, what is your understanding and reporting around the Kamala question? Because this is a big part, like, from my understanding, it is a big part of how the president's team is thinking about it. It's not as though...

I don't think there's a high level of confidence that Kamala Harris would have a better shot to beat Trump than Joe Biden does. And I think that that's kind of baked in here, right? - I mean, well, first question about whether she would be on the ticket. All I have been told from senior Biden people is there is no world in which this party will do anything other if Joe Biden does decide to step aside, which it looks very unlikely, but if he did,

there's no world in which she would not be on the top of the ticket. It would have to be decided by delegates. This is not a coronation. It's not how it works anymore. But it's hard to imagine that that wouldn't happen, first of all, because of the obvious. And, you know, people think that she's earned it and that she is the person who needs to be in that spot. But also, mechanically,

she is on the ticket, so the money is already attached to her. You know, can they get around that if they need to? Probably. There are ways to get around sort of a lot of things. But that is, that's really...

the most important thing to think about. All right. One thing I do want to note, we're just getting in apparently the first comments from the first lady, Jill Biden, in an interview with Vogue magazine. And she says, quote, the family will not let these 90 minutes define the four years he has been president. And they say, quote,

We will continue to fight. She said that the president, quote, will always do what's best for the country. We're going to keep digging into what else she had to say there and bring it to you right after this break. And of course, you can watch more of these interviews with lawmakers on State of the Union every Sunday at 9 a.m. Eastern right here on CNN. Dana, thank you so much for being here this morning and congratulations on the first day of debate.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. All right. Coming up next, Boeing close to a deal with the DOJ to plead guilty to criminal charges. We'll bring you that as part of the morning roundup. Plus, the co-chair of the Biden campaign, Senator Chris Coons, joins us live to talk about the president's decision and insistence on remaining in the race.

All right, 46 minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup. Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon going to prison today for defying subpoenas from the January 6th Select Committee. Bannon was found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress nearly two years ago. The Supreme Court rejecting a last minute effort by Bannon to avoid his four month sentence.

The Justice Department nearing an agreement with Boeing that includes a corporate monitor and a fine in exchange for a guilty plea to criminal charges. A lawyer representing victims' families from two fatal 737 MAX crashes is calling it a sweetheart deal. Starting today, some bars in California must provide roofie testing kits. Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law last year requiring bars and nightclubs that serve alcohol only and no food to offer the drug testing kits.

A candidate for the Hennepin County Board in Minnesota admitting that scene from the movie Home Alone gave her the idea to buy a tarantula and allegedly throw it at a tenant who refused to leave her home. Marissa Simonetti was arrested and charged with assault. Just because they put it in the movies, kids, doesn't mean you should do it at home. All right, let's turn back now to this.

You know Joe, he famously loves trains, but apparently not of thought. It's all night confused and halting and trailing off. I've seen beauty pageant contestants answer questions better. Democrats have some hard conversations they have to have. Joe Biden, noble guy, did a great thing when he got elected president, did very well for three years, but now there is no toothpaste left in that tube.

And we either walk around with bad breath or green teeth or walk into his EVS and shoplift a new tube. OK, after President Biden's debate performance on Thursday, Democrats have spent the last several days in panic mode. And while many of the party's leaders have come to the president's defense, some are saying that they're having conversations about Biden's candidacy.

There are very honest and serious and rigorous conversations taking place at every level of our party. All right. Joining me now is Delaware's Democratic Senator Chris Coons. He's a national co-chair for President Biden's 2024 campaign and has, of course, been close to the president for many years. Senator, thanks very much for being here.

Always good to be on with you. Happy Monday morning. Happy Monday, indeed. We just just in here, sir, is a new interview that the first lady, Jill Biden, did for the cover of Vogue magazine. And she says that her husband, quote, will always do this.

what's best for the country. Senator, my question to you is, you, many Democrats, certainly the president, have painted Donald Trump's candidacy and potential second term as an existential threat to the very foundations of our democracy. - Absolutely. - If it becomes clear that President Biden cannot beat Donald Trump after that performance, do you think he should step aside?

- Well, Casey, that's not where we are. All the evidence we've seen after the very difficult debate performance on Thursday night is that the polls haven't moved. A few have moved in Biden's favor. We've had record grassroots fundraising and a record number of folks applied to work on the campaign. I spent the whole weekend campaigning across Pennsylvania and was very encouraged by what I heard from grassroots volunteers there. I also, as you can imagine, took a whole lot of phone calls

from donors and supporters, from many journalists, and from other colleagues, senators, governors, others. There's a lot of conversation, but I do think it's important to reflect on how strong and how capable a President Joe Biden has been and what a shocking and clear threat to democracy Donald Trump presented on that debate stage in Atlanta.

If there's an editorial board out there, and I'm looking at you, New York Times, and you watch that performance, and you're going to spend all your time focused on why you're convinced that having Joe Biden step aside is the best path forward for the American people,

and very little time on the performance of Donald Trump, a man who's been convicted of 34 felonies of sexual assault, held liable for commercial fraud and faces dozens more charges and who lied and lied and lied on that stage.

If that's not alarming and concerning to you, then I'd like you to refocus your lens because what I've heard from all the other elected officials I've talked to is they have confidence in Joe Biden. They think he's our strongest candidate, and I'm looking forward to campaigning hard for him from now through November.

Sir, you mentioned the editorial board. There also was this column from Maureen Dowd, who covered President Biden as when she was a young reporter, he was in the Senate. She was she covered his 1988 campaign. She opened her column this way, quote, He's being selfish. She's putting himself ahead of the country. He's surrounded by opportunistic enablers. He has created a reality distortion field where we're told not to believe what we have plainly seen.

His hubris is infuriating. He says he's doing this for us, but he's really doing it for himself. And I mean, look, the piece of this that I want to zero in on here is that we are told not to believe what we have plainly seen. I think for a lot of, you know, voters, you know, certainly the way that the White House talks to reporters in Washington, I think there's a little bit of this. But for voters who saw that on stage and then are told, hey, this guy actually has it all together,

What do you say to people who feel like they are being gaslit or somehow lied to or told that what they seem to see with their own eyes isn't actually the case? So here's what we're seeing on the screen that you're showing right now.

A president who is frankly thunderstruck by just how aggressively Donald Trump is lying about everything from January 6th to when there's a record deficit. It was under Trump, not under Biden, to the impact of his proposed economic policy. But, sir, he looked like that from the moment he walked out on stage before anything ever came out of Trump's mouth. And, Casey, if I could finish my sentence, then I'll let you ask the next question.

and where the next day at a campaign rally in North Carolina, he gave a forceful and engaging and sharp speech. I think everyone's entitled to have a bad night. And I prefer to Maureen Dowd's column if we're gonna compare columns in different newspapers, EJ Dionne's column where he basically said,

What is it we saw on that stage? A bad night or a sign of a bad future? I think that President Biden needs to reassure those who were paying attention by giving more and more of the sorts of interviews and impromptu events and engagements that put him in America's living room in the first place.

I've known Joe Biden 30 years. Nobody does better than Joe at working a fire station, a union hall, a coffee shop. He was at a Waffle House later that night in Atlanta. He worked the crowd at the Raleigh event. He's had several events in New York in the last few days. I agree with E.J. Dionne that we need to remind the American people of who Joe Biden is, a strong and capable president with an incredible record and a good heart.

who can tell the truth and get the job done in sharp contrast to who Donald Trump is, a man who on that stage just spewed chaos, anger, vengeance, and lies, which reflects how he led as president. I'll remind you, Casey,

Donald Trump's own vice president, chief of staff, secretary of defense, national security advisor, all won't support him and say he shouldn't be let back into the White House. I hope we spend as much time focusing on that as the parlor game of will he or won't he in the days to come. - Sir, do you think that the people around President Biden let him down by not putting him out there more ahead of this so that maybe this wouldn't feel like such a shock?

Look, I've been encouraging more unscheduled, casual engagements with folks, and we've seen more of that in the last couple of weeks. I do think that part of the challenge of being president, and this is true for many presidents, is that the demands of the job mean you're often in small group settings.

Very few of us got to see him in the room at the G7, for example, just last week with world leaders. But I spoke to our ambassador to Italy, a dear friend of mine, the former governor of Delaware, who was in the room with him. And I said, did you see anything like that alleged moment of mental loss of acuity? He said no. He was sharp. He was engaged. He was commanding.

We don't often see him in that setting. What we may see, and you showed it, is a compelling speech on the beach in Normandy or that engaging speech in North Carolina. But I'll share with you the criticism some have raised with me when I make that point. He's got a teleprompter. He's well prepared. We do need to see more unscripted and off-the-record moments. That is something I'm encouraging, yes. Do you think that he should do another debate with Donald Trump?

I do. If he's confident in his preparation, in his team, I think he should because he needs to erase some of the negatives of the campaign debate that just happened and build on his accomplishments. Look, I think it's hard to stand on a debate stage with a guy who's just unloading a torrent and unprecedented, even for Donald Trump, barrage of lies and be the only person up there fact checking him.

And he needed to be better prepared for how to handle that and to forcefully assert his own record and his vision for his second term. There's lots more good work to do.

But for younger Americans, and I was speaking with some college students over the weekend, the contrast is sharp between Joe Biden, who's done more to combat climate change than any American president, more to make our country more inclusive and just than any American president, more to create opportunity in high-skilled, high-wage manufacturing jobs and the jobs of the future. And Donald Trump's record and values and priorities all stand in sharp contrast to that.

So I think the more he has casual and regular engagements with voters of all ages and backgrounds, the more likely we are to be happy with the outcome in November as Democrats. All right. Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, very much appreciate you coming on. I realize it's a tough day to be out there with us, but you're a real good sport and I appreciate your time. All right. Our panels are our.

our panel is back. Elliot Williams, kind of your thoughts on, on this with Chris Coons. What was really interesting was when he said, you know, the president didn't look confused. He was just thunderstruck by the lies that Donald Trump was making. And, you know, your point in response was, well, that's how the president sort of looked

from the moment he walked out there on stage. And like you said, this is a very tough day to be a surrogate for the president. And the simple fact is they are coming up with virtually every excuse in many respects for a performance that was by any historical standard disastrous for a candidate.

Well, and it's also the case that this idea that they should put the president out there more so that he can prove to the American people that he has what it takes. I've heard that over and over and over again for literally years from people close to the White House. And I think having seen the debate, people have a pretty good idea why that hasn't happened.

because he has good moments and bad moments, good days and bad days. And you don't know which Joe Biden is going to come out in any particular circumstance. So they can't necessarily they don't necessarily feel safe putting him out there on a more rigorous basis than they already do. And that's just going to compound the difficulty. Why did they feel safe putting him out? I mean, this was the Biden campaign's idea, this debate.

Look, I think that they are used to Joe Biden showing up for game day, right? Like he always shows up. He showed up for the State of the Union. He showed up. So I just think that they were prepared for that Joe Biden to show up that day. And it's clear to everyone that he did not have a good performance. But again, he came back in North Carolina and had a great performance. I just don't think we need we can lose sight of the contrast that he's going to show to Donald Trump. But he to all of everyone's point, he needs to get out there and show the voters what he is going to do for the next four years and that he can do the job. It's not even about his vision. It's that he is able to do the job.

non-teleprompter speeches during the day. They need more of that. But I'll say, here's the risk, right? In theory, you want a new visual. They should have had him out on Morning Joe the next morning. But if he shows up during the debate, it is over, right? That's an entire risk. If they bring him out again in an unscheduled way, news conference interview, and it looks more like the debate than it did North Carolina, that's a whole other set of issues. And the frustration for so many Democrats is that we're even talking about someone who's been president for four years having to prove he can just do the job.

It's really, it's a reminder. He still has control of the nuclear codes. All right. Thanks to all of you for joining us this morning. I'm Casey Hunt. Don't go anywhere. CNN News Central starts right now.

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