Biden speaks out about his future in the race as THIRD Senator and seven more House Democrats call for him to drop out

Lofgren, a close ally of Nancy Pelosi, becomes the seventh House Democrat today to call on Biden to drop out today.

By Emily Goodin, senior White House correspondent

President Joe Biden on Friday said he’d be back on the campaign trail next week amid speculation he could exit the race in the next few days.

‘I look forward to getting back on the campaign trail next week to continue exposing the threat of Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda while making the case for my own record and the vision that I have for America: one where we save our democracy, protect our rights and freedoms, and create opportunity for everyone,’ he said in a statement released by his campaign.

Biden is isolating in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, alongside wife Jill Biden as he recovers from COVID.

The drumbeat against Biden from Democrats has been sounding louder.

In the hours since Donald Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday night in Milwaukee, another six Democrats have called on Biden to exit the contest.

In total, 35 Democrats have called for him to step down as the party’s nominee amid worries his candidacy could cost them the House and control of the Senate.

The president is scheduled to head to Texas and California at the end of next week to fundraise for his campaign amid reports donors are going to stop backing him.

His campaign has insisted he is in the race to win it.

Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon told MSNBC’s Morning Joe: ‘You have heard from the President directly time and again. He is in this race to win and he is our nominee and he’s going to be our president for a second term.’

Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts has joined the chorus of members of his party telling Joe Biden its time to pass the torch in the presidential race.

Democratic Rep. Greg Landsman from Ohio has told CNN that President Joe Biden he should drop out of the presidential race.

He becomes the sixth member of the House caucus to urge him to step aside on Friday, and the 35th in total.

I think the president’s been great … but I do think the American people want a new leader, somebody that isn’t Trump and that isn’t Biden

By Charlie Spiering, Senior Political Reporter for the Daily Mail

Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan enthusiastically endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president on Friday, saying ti was time to ‘rock and roll’ and move forward.

‘I think we be decisive about this. We rip off the band-aid, make Kamala Harris the nominee,’ he said.

Ryan appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to make his case for Harris, arguing that Harris had made progress on the campaign trail.

‘She is hitting her stride. She has her voice. She has matured and I don’t say this in a condescending way but as a political observer she’s matured,’ he said.

Ryan referred to her record as a prosecutor as a strength in the campaign, adding it was a great skill to have while debating Donald Trump to stop his ‘B.S.’

‘She’s ready to rock and roll. I don’t know what we’re waiting for, let’s get her in the game,’ he said.

Ryan also argued that Harris would play well in the midwest, appearing to forget her struggles to gain traction in Iowa during her failed presidential primary campaign in 2016.

‘She’s got a great personality, fun to be with. She can tease and have fun,’ he said. ‘I think these working class folks are going to love her once they meet her in Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Wisconsin.’

Ryan’s enthusiastic endorsement of Harris suggests he could be angling for a position as Harris’ eventual running mate, should she take over for Biden.

The congressman from Ohio has experience debating Sen. J.D. Vance, now Trump’s vice presidential pick, even though the Democrat from Ohio lost the election by a roughly six point margin.

By Emily Goodin, Senior White House Correspondent

President Joe Biden‘s family is starting to discuss an exit plan from the 2024 campaign, a startling new report revealed on Friday, as one adviser insists he will be the nominee and another Democrat calls for him to quit.

It comes as one House Democrat close to Biden told DailyMail.com that he thinks worries about about the election are finally getting through to the president: ‘I think it is and I’m going to leave it at that.’

The president is increasingly isolated with his small circle of advisers – including wife Jill, sister Valerie Owens, and son Hunter – growing even tighter as the family remains livid with some staff in the aftermath of the first presidential debate.

And they remain protective of Biden. The family wants an exit plan – if it comes to pass – to be on the president’s terms: done to ensure Donald Trump will lose in November and paying tribute to Biden’s more than 40 years of public service, NBC News reported.

Publicly, however, the Biden team repeated the president is in the race to win it even as lawmakers, donors and major Democratic officials say Biden, 81, can’t beat Donald Trump in November.

Democratic Senator Martin Heinrch of New Mexico has become the third in the upper chamber to call for his party leader President Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Donald Trump’s immediate reaction to getting shot was ‘bada**”, but insisted he won’t take a side in the 2024 election.

Zuckerberg’s comments come as several influential figures in Silicon Valley, including Tesla boss Elon Musk and venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, back Trump for president.

In an interview with Bloomberg on Thursday, the billionaire tech executive said Trump’s response to the assassination attempt shows why he is so loved by his army of MAGA fans.

Meta has frequently called out Trump’s posts for containing misinformation and breaching content rules on its platforms.

It also suspended his Facebook and Instagram accounts for about two years following the January 2021 Capitol riots.

Zuckerberg said Meta was making changes that he hoped would mean Facebook was not as much of a flashpoint in elections going forward.

On the political prediction website PredictIt, Joe Biden is now given only a 14 percent chance of being the victor of the election in November.

He has only a 27 percent chance of being the Democrat nominee. Kamala Harris is given a 52 percent chance being the nominee.

British bookmaker Star Sports has Biden’s chances of winning the general election at less than 10 percent.

William Kedjanyi, political betting analyst at Star Sports, said there has also been a ‘massive shift’ in who people think will be the Democrat nominee.

Things seem to be going from bad to worse for Joe Biden after testing positive for COVID-19, and as a result, there’s been a fair bit of movement in the markets in favor of fellow Democrat Kamala Harris.

Four more House Democrats called on Joe Biden to ‘step aside’ and drop out of the presidential race in a letter published Friday.

Reps. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., Jared Huffman, D-Calif., Marc Veasey, D-Texas, and Huy Garcia, D-Texas., all signed the letter.

They also called on Biden to look at replacements such as VP Kamala Harris to carry the Democrat party forward in November.

‘We believe the most responsible and patriotic thing you can do in this moment is to step aside as our nominee while continuing to lead our party from the White House,’ they wrote.

‘Democrats have a deep and talented bench of young leaders, led by Vice President Kamala Harris, who you have lifted up, empowered, and prepared for this moment.

By Emily Goodin, senior White House correspondent

Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon on Friday acknowledged the president’s re-election campaign has some work to do but argues they have only seen a ‘small’ slippage in the polls.

Appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, O’Malley Dillon agreed the campaign has had a tough time since Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump.

I’m not here to say that this hasn’t been a tough several weeks for the campaign. There’s no doubt that it has been and we’ve definitely seen some slippage in support, but it has been a small movement,’ she said.

The American people know that the President is older. They see that. They knew that before the debate. Yes, of course, we have a lot of work to do to make sure that we are reassuring the American people that yes, he’s old, but he can do the job and he can win.

She also argued Trump is ‘the same person he was in 2020.’

Donald Trump is at his peak with his numbers. There’s no There’s no new voter he’s bringing to the table. Right? So that’s an important kind of framing to remember. And we are about to head into our convention.

She brushed aside questions on whether Biden’s staying in the race will hurt Democrats down the ballot, saying the party has ‘extraordinary Democratic candidates on the ticket in battleground states and non battleground states.’

The President knows better than anyone how to run and win locally.

And, she noted, Biden is in it to win it.

You have heard from the President directly time and again. He is in this race to win and he is our nominee and he’s going to be our president for a second term.’

Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois has become the latest House Democrat to demand Biden drop out of the presidential race.

Casten (IL-06) wrote an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune calling for the 81-year-old to exit with ‘all the dignity and decency that has guilded his half-century of public service’.

He urged the embattled Biden, who has COVID, to step aside so he can ‘cement his legacy as the President who saved our demoracy in 2020.

Casten added Joe should make way for ‘trusted hands’ in 2024 who can ‘carry his legacy forward.’

By Emily Goodin, senior White House correspondent

President Joe Biden has been briefed on the IT outage that has caused chaos around the world with flights, surgeries and other operations being impacted.

The outage is attributed to CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm whose software is used by scores of industries around the world to protect against hackers.

A software update resulted in crashes of machines running the Microsoft Windows operating system. It is not considered to be a cyber attack.

‘The President has been briefed on the CrowdStrike outage and his team is in touch with CrowdStrike and impacted entities. His team is engaged across the interagency to get sector by sector updates throughout the day and is standing by to provide assistance as needed,’ a White House official said.

By Emily Goodin, senior White House correspondent

Donald Trump‘s would-be assassin had researched the Princess of Wales online before he tried to murder the former president, it was reported today.

Police in the US made the discovery about his apparent fixation with the British royal after searching Crooks’ home and seizing his electronic devices in the aftermath of his attack in Pennsylvania last Saturday.

Firebrand Democratic ‘Squad’ member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Instagram Live overnight to vent about her party’s push to get President Joe Biden off the ticket, warning that many of those who want him to step aside also want Vice President Kamal Harris off the ticket.

‘If you think there is consensus among the people who want Joe Biden to leave … that they will support, Vice President Harris, you would be mistaken,’ she told viewers.

And AOC called ‘bull***t’ on Democrats who have been giving reporters anonymous quotes about Biden – saying elected officials in her party who say a loss to Donald Trump is a fait accompli should give up their seats.

‘My community does not have the option to lose,’ the New York socialist said.

‘If they’re going to come out and say all their little things on background, off the record, but they’re not going to be fully honest, I’m going to be honest for them. I’m in these rooms. I see what they say in conversations,’ the congresswoman said.

“A lot of them are not just interested in removing the president. They are interested in removing the whole ticket.”

Donald Trump quipped about the chart that ‘saved my life’ by causing him to turn his head at the moment his would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks reigned down bullets at his Pennsylvania rally on Saturday.

Speaking at the conclusion of the Republican Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Thursday, the former president was able to crack a joke about the assassination attempt after getting emotional earlier in his remarks when recounting the attack.

Trump gave a moment-by-moment retelling of the events he experienced at his last rally and said he would never talk about it again because it’s ‘too painful.’

‘Less than four years ago, I handed this administration the strongest border in American history,’ Trump said. ‘But you can see on the chart that saved my life – that was the chart that saved my life.’

‘I said, ‘look at it.’ I’m so proud of it. I think it’s one of the greatest – it was done by the border patrol – one of the greatest charts I’ve ever seen. It showed everything just like that – you know the chart.’

At one point, Trump appeared to realize the chart was up on the screens behind him in the Fiserv Forum.

‘Oh, there it is. That’s pretty good. Wow,’ the former president lauded.

‘Last time I put up that chart I never really got to look at it,’ he joked. ‘But without that chart, I would not be here today. Never got to look at it.’

‘I never got to see it that day.’

Donald Trump‘s youngest of 10 grandchildren sat on his lap for her father Eric’s remarks at the Republican National Convention on Thursday – and stole the show.

The final night of the convention featured Trump’s biggest entourage of family members, including Eric and Lara Trump’s children Carolina, 4, and Luke, 6 – and former first lady Melania Trump.

All of Trump’s children were in the guest-of-honor’s section of the arena except for Barron – though the father of five did claim the 18-year-old was around.

Carolina clapped as she sat on Trump’s lap while her older brother Eric Luke joined in on cheering on their dad as he sat on mom Lara’s lap.

Even as he was putting the finishing touches on a record-length RNC speech last night, political aides to former President Donald Trump were setting strategies for his run against someone other than the current Democratic candidate, President Joe Biden.

Trump aides gathered in the Trade Hotel next to the Fiserv Forum mulling who Vice President Kamala Harris could pick as her running mate if she replaces Biden on the ticket, Politico reported.

MAGA Inc., the primary pro-Trump super PAC, has been doing opposition research and message testing against prospective Biden replacements, the outlet reported.

Those include Harris, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and even billionaire TV personality Mark Cuban, a person with knowledge told Politico.

Another Trump-aligned super PAC, the outlet reported, has commissioned polling into how Trump would fare against Harris and a said the data showed Harris faring worse against Trump than Biden is — which runs counter to some other survey findings thus far.