ABC News has pushed forward the release of its crucial interview with President Biden as pressure mounts on the 81-year-old POTUS to prove that he can stay in the 20204 race following a catastrophic debate performance last week.
Biden is set to speak to anchor George Stephanopoulos early Friday, with the Disney-owned network originally saying it planned to release the taped interview in dribs and drabs before showing the full thing on Sunday.
Now, the entire pre-taped interview will air as a primetime special at 8 p.m. on Friday. A preview of the interview will be released earlier on “World News Tonight with David Muir,” with airs at 6:30 p.m.
ABC News also said it would release a full transcript of the unedited interview on Friday.
Biden, who will be 86 if he finishes a second term in January 2029, gave such a dismal performance during the debate that even some are now Democrats unsure of his fitness for office and future as the party’s candidate.
The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Biden has admitted to a friend that he might have to drop out if he can’t get his campaign back on track in the coming days.
The ABC interview — despite being a taped appearance — will give voters their first chance to see Biden speak at length since the debate, where he gave several rambling, incoherent answers and appeared to lose his train of thought entirely on one of the first questions.
The president and his aides attributed his lackluster performance to him having a cold and jet lag from two trips earlier this month — depsite spending a week preparing at Camp David.
Biden’s interviewer, Stephanopoulos, is a veteran ABC News host who started his career as a communications director for Bill Clinton’s campaign, and later in the Clinton White House.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle have complained publicly and privately that the Biden Administration hasn’t done enough to prove the president’s competency for another term — with some members of his own party even calling for Vice President Kamala Harris to step in and take over the role.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre pronounced Harris as Biden’s political heir Wednesday, at one point referring to her as “president,” when asked about his 2020 campaign remark that he would be a “transitional” candidate.
“One of the reasons why he picked the vice president, President [sic] Kamala Harris, is because she is indeed the future of the party,” Jean-Pierre said at her regular briefing.
Harris, 59, would face stiff competition for the Democratic presidential nomination, including from Govs. Gavin Newsom of California, 56, and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, 52, if Biden were to resign.
Despite some calls for Biden to step aside, most members of his party have continued to support the president in public, including a group of Democratic governors who met with him at the White House on Wednesday.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, one of Biden’s only gubernatorial allies to speak outside the West Wing, said that all of the attendees pledged to support Biden, at least in private, in the wake of his disastrous Thursday debate performance.
“We came together tonight to listen to President Biden to tell us, in his own words, what his plans were. I’m here to tell you today President Joe Biden is in it to win it. And all of us said we pledged our support to him because the skates could not be higher,” Hochul said.
“We talked about how we transitioned under a monarchy and a tyranny that our Founding Fathers fought against and that we risk right now descending back into that very same place. We will stand with the president as we fight that force that force — that force being Donald Trump.”
