Brutal split screen: Biden holed up with COVID while Trump accepts nomination

WASHINGTON − While his opponent takes the stage Thursday night in Milwaukee to accept the Republican nomination days after surviving an assassination attempt, President Joe Biden will be holed up in his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, recouping from COVID-19.

The split screen punctuates what has been a brutal three weeks for Biden that began with a disastrous debate performance against former President Donald Trump on June 27 that ignited calls among Democrats for the 81-year-old Biden to withdraw from the campaign.

Biden has remained defiant publicly, insisting that he won't drop out. But each time it has seemed he might weather the storm, more bad news for the beleaguered president has dropped. Nothing has matched the extraordinary series of unfortunate events that, one by one, hit Biden over the past 24 hours and intensified pressure for him to drop out.

Thursday barely began when the White House called a "lid" for the day at 9:40 a.m. ET − a statement to the media that Biden would be making no public appearances.

More:Chuck Schumer warns Biden his candidacy hurts Democrats: reports

The night before, as Biden flew back from Las Vegas to Delaware after testing positive for COVID-19, severely damaging news reports came out: that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told Biden in face-to-face meetings that his continued candidacy puts Democrats in danger of losing control of either chamber in Congress.

ABC first reported on the meetings, which took place at Biden's Rehoboth Beach vacation home last Saturday.

CNN later reported that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who remains enormously powerful among congressional Democrats, relayed to Biden in a phone call that polling shows he cannot beat Trump and that Biden's candidacy could destroy Democrats' chances of taking control of the House of Representatives.

More:Rep. Adam Schiff becomes latest Democrat to call for Biden to drop out of race

Democratic calls for Biden to step aside momentarily tamped down in the immediate days after Trump, the Republican nominee, survived a near assassination in a shooting at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Yet the signals from Schumer, Jeffries and Pelosi marked the first evidence that Democratic leaders are pushing Biden to reconsider his bid, even as the president publicly dismisses that notion.

White House spokesman Andrew Bates said Biden told Schumer and Jeffries that "he is the nominee of the party, he plans to win and looks forward to working with both of them to pass his 100 days agenda to help working families."

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The Biden campaign rejected any notion Thursday that it was preparing for the possibility of Biden dropping out.

“Our campaign is not working through any scenarios where President Biden is not the top of the ticket. He is and will be the Democratic nominee,” said Quinten Fulks, the Biden campaign's deputy campaign manager.

While Biden was still campaigning Wednesday afternoon in Las Vegas − seeking to keep the crucial battleground state of Nevada in play for Democrats − Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., issued a statement through the Los Angeles Times calling on Biden to end his campaign.

Schiff, former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a close ally of Pelosi's, became the most prominent Democratic lawmaker so far to publicly push for a replacement presidential nominee. He joined about two dozen congressional Democratic colleagues who have done the same.

White House officials are convinced Pelosi was behind Schiff's statement, according to Reuters, which quoted an unnamed White House source who said: "Nancy is all over this. She doesn't miss. Schiff wouldn't move without her approval."

Meanwhile, as Democrats were growing more uneasy about Biden, Republicans were rallying around Trump. A poll released Wednesday by The Associated Press found 65% of Democratic voters want Biden to drop out to allow the party to pick a different nominee. In contrast, 73% of Republican voters said they approve of Trump as their nominee.

Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., a Biden ally, said, "Joe Biden has always put the country first. He's done what's best for America .... I think he'll keep doing so." He added: "He's working towards that."

Hickenlooper said whether to step aside is Biden's decision to make but said "certainly there's more and more indications that that would be in the best interests of the country, I think."

Not long after the the Schiff news dropped, Biden was in campaign mode Wednesday, taking selfies and shaking hands with patrons at The Original Lindo Michoácan Restaurant in Las Vegas. But before he could make it to his next appearance − speaking at the annual conference of the Latino group UnidosUS − he tested positive for COVID-19.

“Regrettably," Janet Murguía, president and CEO of UnidosUS, alerted the conference to gasps, "I was just on the phone with President Biden and he shared his deep disappointment at not being able to join us this afternoon. The president has been at many events, as we all know, and just tested positive for COVID."

More:President Biden tests positive for COVID, taking him off campaign trail during critical time

More:Biden says only a 'medical condition' would push him to consider dropping out of race

Biden's bout with the virus could not come at a worse time. The president has been taking more television and radio interviews and hitting the campaign trail hard in a push to reassure Americans he is still physically and mentally up to another four years in the White House.

A note Wednesday from Biden's doctor said the president was experiencing only mild symptoms, including a runny nose and a cough. In a letter Thursday, Dr. Kevin O'Connor said the symptoms remained and Biden is taking the antiviral pill Paxlovid for treatment.

"I am doing well,” Biden told reporters Wednesday night after landing in Delaware on Air Force One.

Yet the damage for Biden politically could become a lot more severe.

Contributing: Reuters, Brianne Pfannenstiel and Rebecca Morin

Reach Joey Garrison on X, formerly Twitter, @joeygarrison.