Biden prepares for Nato summit as he faces more pressure from Democrats to step aside

Possibly a case of 2+2=5 here but The New York Post has reported that Dr Kevin O’Connor met with Dr Kevin Cannard, a leading specialist in Parkinson’s disease from the Walter Reed Medical Centre, at the White House on January 17 this year.

The Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid found that out by examining White House visitor logs, which do not disclose the reason for a guest’s visit and it is therefore a bit of a leap to assume Dr Cannard was there to assess the commander-in-chief’s mental health, although it is not beyond the realms of possibility.

This is the Post’s impossibly tasteless current frontpage, incidentally, in case you were wondering where its allegiances lie.

It’s also worth saying again that the Biden camp has continued to deny that the president is suffering from cognitive decline or any other degenerative mental condition and has insisted that his “bad night” on the debate stage was simply the result of a cold.

Biden himself told George Stephanopoulos on Friday that he had no interest in receiving further testing, despite the likes of CNN chief medical correspondent Dr Sanjay Gupta urging him to do so.

Mike Bedigan brings us more on that.

US vice president Kamala Harris barely mentioned her own running mate on Saturday as she spoke to Black voters and talked about the 2024 race at the annual Essence Festival in New Orleans.

Harris has been seen by many Democrats as the obvious choice to pick up the mantle of the party’s 2024 nomination should Biden step aside in the coming days – a proposition the president has firmly denied will take place.

But, in Louisiana, she appeared ready to take on that role regardless as she hammered Trump and sought to lay out the stakes of the election.

She spoke for just under 30 minutes and only mentioned Biden directly one time, making no mention of the growing movement within her party for the preisident to bow out of the 2024 race.

Instead, she reserved the majority of her words for Trump, whom allies of the incumbent president argue the press has not held to the same standard – despite the seemingly endless coverage of his criminal trials, convictions and innumerable scandals.

Here’s more John Bowden.

The president will shift his focus from campaigning for re-election this week to hosting a major Nato summit. But that won’t quiet the increasingly urgent questions about his precarious political situation, which is now threatening to consume his own party at the worst possible moment.

European leaders gather in Washington DC on Tuesday to celebrating the North Atlantic military alliance’s 75th anniversary. Biden will attend a series of official events and hold a news conference.

Congress is also heading back into session, meaning there will be face-to-face meetings where Democratic lawmakers can discuss concerns about Biden’s ability to stay in the presidential race for its final four months — not to mention handle another term in the White House.

The Nato gathering should at least grant the American some respite and another opportunity to look presidential on the world stage, but it comes with another key test.

The summit will focus on Russia’s war with Ukraine, but likely overshadowing all of Biden’s other duties during it is a news conference set for Thursday.

His performance there will be as closely scrutinized as his ABC interview on Friday for further signs of frailty or mental struggles after his disastrous debate against Trump late last month.

Also, those gathering for the summit have discussed “Trump-proofing,” or safeguarding, Nato against a possible return of Trump to the White House — and those discussions could heat up because of the concerns about Biden’s political future.

The gathering unfolds the week before Republicans gather in Milwaukee to formally nominate Trump, who during the debate simply shrugged when Biden asked him if he would “stay in Nato or you’re going to pull out of Nato?”

Here’s a little background on the alliance and this week’s DC summit.

Influential California representative Adam Schiff has said that US vice president Kamala Harris would make a “phenomenal” president and could “overwhelmingly” beat Trump in the 2024 race.

Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, the House Democrat expressed some anxiety about the incumbent remaining in this year’s presidential race, hinting that other options, such as Harris, could be a better option for their party.

However, he stopped short of calling Biden to step aside, saying that the decision is ultimately up to the president.

“I think the vice president would be a phenomenal president, I think she has the experience, the judgment, the leadership ability to be an extraordinary president,” Schiff said.

“But before we get into a decision about who else should be, the president needs to make a decision whether it’s him.”

Here’s more from Ariana Baio.

Over the weekend, Minnesota congresswoman Angie Craig became the fifth Democrat to publicly call for the president to drop out of the 2024 race, warning that there is “simply too much at stake to risk a second Donald Trump presidency”.

Writing on X, she said: “I have great respect for President Biden’s decades of service to our nation and his steadfast commitment to making our country a better place.

“However, given what I saw and heard from the president during last week’s debate in Atlanta, coupled with the lack of a forceful response from the president himself following the debate, I do not believe the president can effectively campaign and win against Donald Trump.”

Ariana Baio has more.

Good morning!

President Joe Biden continues to face intense pressure to quit the race for the White House after more of his fellow Democrats added their voices to calls for him to step aside on Sunday – an unwelcome distraction as the president prepares to host a major Nato summit in Washington DC this week.

In behind-closed-door crisis talks convened by House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, several representatives including Jerry Nadler, Susan Wild, Adam Smith and Mark Takano suggested it was time for Biden, 81, to make way following his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump in Atlanta last month.

Here’s John Bowden’s report.

A Philadelphia radio station has cut ties with its host after she revealed that Joe Biden’s campaign team sent a list of pre-approved questions prior to an interview with the president.

Sara Lomax, the president and CEO of WURD Radio, posted a statement to the company’s website on Sunday announcing that the station and radio host Andrea Lawful-Sanders had “mutually agreed to part ways”.

On Saturday, Lawful-Sanders told CNN that four of the questions she asked Biden were provided to her by his team.

“The questions were sent to me for approval, I approved of them,” Lawful-Sanders said.

“I got several questions. Eight of them. And the four that were chosen were the ones that I approved.”

WURD issued a statement titled “Accountability, Access, and A Path Forward: Why Black Media Matters,” which claims that Lawful-Sanders negotiated the interview on her own without the knowledge of the radio station.

Lomax insisted that “WURD Radio remains an independent voice that our audience can trust will hold elected officials accountable.”

“As Pennsylvania’s only independent Black-owned talk radio station, WURD Radio has cultivated that trust with our audience over our 20-year history,” Lomax wrote. “This is something we take very seriously. Agreeing to a pre-determined set of questions jeopardizes that trust and is not a practice that WURD Radio engages in or endorses as a matter of practice or official policy.”

Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a possible contender for Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, went to bat for the former president on Sunday by trying to distance the presumptive Republican nominee from Project 2025.

“Think tanks do think tank stuff they come up with ideas, they say things,” Rubio told CNN’s State of the Union when he was asked if he was “comfortable” with the policies outlined in the project headed by the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Ariana Baio reports: