President Biden’s family is urging him to stay in the race and keep fighting despite his disastrous performance in last week’s debate, even as some members of his clan have privately expressed exasperation with how he was prepared for the event by his staff, people familiar with the situation said Sunday.
Mr. Biden gathered with his wife, children and grandchildren at Camp David to try to find a way to calm Democrats’ anxiety. While those close to him were well aware of his poor showing against former President Donald J. Trump, they argued that he could still show the country that he was capable of serving for another four years.
Mr. Biden solicited ideas from his advisers on how to proceed, and his team discussed whether he should hold a news conference or give interviews to defend himself and change the discourse, but nothing has yet been decided. The campaign team has scheduled what could be a critical meeting with its national finance committee for Monday to calm nerves and take temperatures.
One of the loudest voices imploring Mr. Biden to resist pressure to step down has been his son, Hunter Biden, whom the president has long relied on for advice, said one of the people briefed on the discussions, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to share internal deliberations. Hunter Biden wants Americans to see the version of his father he knows — rambling and in control of the facts — rather than the aging, faltering president Americans saw Thursday night.
Other family members were trying to figure out how they could be helpful. At least one of the president’s grandchildren has expressed interest in becoming more involved in the campaign, perhaps by talking with influencers on social media, according to the person briefed.
One of the people briefed on the situation said “the whole family is united” and added flatly that the president would not withdraw from the race and had not spoken about it. “Get up and keep fighting,” she said.
Democratic anger was on display Sunday when John Morgan, a major Democratic donor close to Mr. Biden’s brother, Frank, publicly blamed the advisers who handled the president’s debate preparations, citing Ron Klain, Anita Dunn and Bob Bauer by name.
“Biden has been fooled for too long by the value of Anita Dunn and her husband,” Morgan wrote on social media. “They need to go… TODAY. The fraud is gross. It was a political blunder.”
He elaborated in a later interview. “It would be like if you took a boxer who was going to fight for the title and put him in a sauna for 15 hours, and then you said, ‘Go fight,'” he said. “I think the debate is all about Ron Klain, Bob Bauer and Anita Dunn.”
Members of Mr. Biden’s family also reportedly focused on the president’s staff, including Ms. Dunn, a senior White House adviser, and her husband, Mr. Bauer, the president’s personal lawyer, who played the role of Mr. Trump during debate rehearsals.
They wondered why Mr. Klain, the former White House chief of staff who led the preparations, would allow himself to be burdened with statistics, and they were furious that Mr. Biden, who arrived for the debate in Atlanta with a summer tan, was made up to appear pale and sallow, said one of the people who has been in contact with several family members.
But the person said the president himself was not among those unhappy and that he still trusted Mr. Klain, Ms. Dunn, Mr. Bauer and the others. A person close to Jill Biden, the first lady, said she wasn’t criticizing them either. A White House official and a second person close to the family later denied that the other members were crazy. Several Democrats said it was unfair to blame staff for the president’s own failures, rejecting what they called second-guessing and scapegoating aimed at deflecting blame from Mr. Biden himself.
Some Democrats pointed out that neither family members, Mr. Morgan nor other critics attended the preparation sessions and therefore had no idea how they took place. A member of Mr. Biden’s entourage said that no one was happy with the way the debate had gone and that it was human nature to look for someone to blame.
Mr. Klain, Ms. Dunn and Mr. Bauer did not comment on the debate preparations, but Mr. Klain said he was 100 percent certain the president would stay in the race.
“He is the choice of Democratic voters,” Mr. Klain said. “We are seeing record levels of support from local donors. We had a bad evening of debate. But campaigns are won by fighting – not giving up – in the face of adversity.
He recalled a 2019 primary debate that went poorly but didn’t stop Mr. Biden. “This is a tough, close campaign and he’s the one who can win it,” Mr. Klain said. “Big donors can’t dictate who the Democratic Party nominee is.”
In the days after the debate, Mr. Biden acknowledged privately and publicly that he had not performed well, and he called trusted advisers like Mr. Klain, Ted Kaufman, his aide and longtime friend, and Jon Meacham, the historian and informal advisor, as well as key donors and party figures.
But three people familiar with Mr. Biden’s calls said they were more about checking in on what people were saying than seeking advice on reassessing his future. His tone was described as measured. One of the people on Mr. Biden’s phone tree said the president wanted to continue campaigning hard to contrast with Mr. Trump, a convicted felon who tried to overturn the last election and made numerous false statements during the debate.
Campaign advisers spent the weekend on the phone with angry major donors in hopes of avoiding a wave of defections. The campaign scheduled a conference call for 5:30 p.m. Monday for its national finance committee to hear from Jen O’Malley Dillon, the campaign chairwoman. Many insiders said preserving the donor base will be key to keeping the president in the race.
Mr. Biden was scheduled to return to the White House on Monday night and spend at least part of the long July 4 weekend with family on the beach in Delaware, but the White House had not announced the rest of his schedule for the week. A Cabinet meeting scheduled for Wednesday was canceled, though officials attributed that to many members traveling the day before the holiday.
While the campaign has forcefully rejected the view that Mr. Biden would step aside for another candidate just weeks before the roll-call vote to formalize his nomination, many Democrats, including some working for the president, said they do not believe the door is yet closed on that possibility.
But Mr. Biden is a proud man, and they said they believed the odds of him trying to pull through were still 4 or 5 to 1. The only way, they said, they could imagine him changing course was if he were granted a dignified exit by which he could claim credit for ousting Mr. Trump in 2020, restoring the country and serving as a transition to the next generation.
A new poll by CBS News found that Democratic voters were very supportive of Mr. Biden, 81, making way for a younger candidate. Forty-five percent of Democrats said they wanted another candidate to take on Mr. Trump. Among all voters, only 27% believe Mr. Biden has the mental and cognitive health necessary to serve as president, down from 35% before the debate.
Democratic allies took to Sunday talk shows to defend the president. “If they didn’t get a little tough, they wouldn’t be Democrats,” Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” But he added, “Joe Biden has demonstrated, not in 90 minutes, but over the last four years, the character and the courage of the man that he is.”
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore acknowledged that Biden’s age was a concern for voters. “The number 81 is a big number,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “But so are historically low unemployment rates. And I don’t think people should lose sight of that.”
Mr. Moore said he would not run if Mr. Biden dropped out. “Joe Biden is not going to withdraw from this race, nor should he,” he said. “He has been a remarkable partner.”
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed rumors that the president would resign. “I support the Biden-Harris ticket,” she told Jen Psaki, Biden’s former White House press secretary, on MSNBC. “I’m not giving up on Joe Biden right now, for any speculation.”
The “right away” in that comment did not go unnoticed, however, and Democrats were still watching what their top elected leaders would do, wondering whether they might privately intervene with the president despite their supportive public comments. Ms. Pelosi’s spokesperson later said she “has full confidence” in Mr. Biden and that “any suggestions to the contrary are not based in fact.”
Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, however, acknowledged that the president’s fate was uncertain. “Very honest, serious, rigorous discussions are happening at every level of our party,” he said on MSNBC, adding that the party would be united “whether he’s the nominee or somebody else is.”
If major discussions about the president’s future were to take place with the family, two Biden confidants said, they would not take place at Camp David, where too many people outside the family could hear them.
The family had already planned ahead of the debate to spend the weekend at Camp David, in part to participate in a photo shoot with celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz. It was the first time the entire family had been together in one place since Hunter Biden was convicted on federal gun charges; he still has to be sentenced and tried on tax charges.
A senior administration official, who was not authorized to detail internal conversations, said there was an ongoing debate about how the president would move forward — not about abandoning , but about how best to argue that he shouldn’t do it.
The version of Mr. Biden that has emerged at rallies and fundraisers from Atlanta is more of the person described by his aides — someone who is energetic, emphatic and ready to keep fighting until November.
But some advisers have not appreciated his use of a teleprompter at fundraisers, a practice encouraged by advisers who want a more disciplined approach from the president, even in informal settings. One adviser said Mr. Biden had been “spooked” by a more informal approach in recent months.
Adam Entous contributed reporting from Washington.
