LAS VEGAS: For the first time since the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, US President Joe Biden hit the campaign trail on Tuesday seeking to shore up his re-election bid as concerns about his age resurface.
As Trump rides a wave of support at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Biden is in Las Vegas reaching out to black voters at the NAACP advocacy group.
The 81-year-old president will also sit down with Black talk show host BET, the latest in a series of interviews as he attempts to address concerns about his mental fitness following his dismal debate performance against Trump last month.
Amid his call for Americans to “lower the temperature” on politics following the attempted assassination of Trump, Biden on Monday canceled a campaign trip to Texas but continued his visit to Nevada.
Biden narrowly won Nevada in his 2020 election victory over Trump.
The trip comes as the Democratic Party is pushing ahead with plans to rush through Biden's own nomination ahead of its conference in August, despite calls to postpone the process as long as divisions over his candidacy persist.
While the attempted assassination of Trump briefly silenced Democrats who called for Biden to step aside, tensions are again emerging in public as the president trails in most polls.
He New York Times reported that a group of House Democrats was trying to build support for a rule change to allow challenges at the convention.
But the Biden campaign insisted the virtual roll call was necessary before the Aug. 19 convention since Republican-led Ohio had moved its filing date to Aug. 7; otherwise, Biden risked being ineligible there.
“It's our obligation as a campaign to make sure that President Biden is on the ballot,” Biden's deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said at a news conference in Milwaukee.
'Riding with Biden'
At the NAACP meeting in Las Vegas, there was broad support for Biden to stay.
“We're with Biden,” said Sydney Martin, 65, assistant pastor at Destiny House Christian Center in upstate New York, describing calls for Biden to step aside as a “trick of the enemy.”
Asha Holmes, 28, said she would also support Biden although she had been “hoping that Kamala (Harris, the vice president) would try to run this year rather than him seeking a second term.”
But questions remain about whether Biden can win again after his halting performance at the Atlanta debate on June 27, where he mangled his words and lost his train of thought.
Biden, who says he “messed up” because of jet lag and illness, vigorously defended his ability to do the job in a major interview with a US network on Monday night.
“I'm old,” Biden said. NBC“But first of all, I'm only three years older than Trump. And secondly, my mental acuity has been pretty good.”
Biden also defended his rhetoric about Trump after Republicans accused him of stoking divisions ahead of the shooting in which the former president was hit in the ear.
FBI investigators are still looking into the motivation of 20-year-old gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks for the attack at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. A bystander was killed and Crooks was shot.
Biden admitted it was a “mistake” to tell donors on a call last week that it was “time to put Trump at the center” of his election campaign.
But Biden insisted on what he said was the need to “talk about the threat to democracy” posed by former President Trump.
Trump refuses to accept the results of the 2020 election and faces criminal charges over the deadly January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by supporters seeking to overturn his loss to Biden.
