‘I Am Running and We’re Going to Win,’ Biden Says in Michigan (2024)

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Biden attacked Trump and took shots at the media. Here’s the latest.

The crowd in Detroit raved over his performance. “Don’t go, Joe,” they chanted at one point. “Let’s get this done!” Mr. Biden shouted.

Here’s what else to know:

• Making his case: “Hopefully with age comes a little wisdom,” Mr. Biden told the crowd in Michigan on Friday, adding that he knew “how to do this job.” He also homed in on Project 2025, a collection of personnel and policy initiatives prepared by a network of conservative think tanks ahead of a Republican presidential administration. He will travel to his beach home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., after the campaign stop.

• Donors freeze cash: Some major Democratic donors told the largest pro-Biden super PAC, Future Forward, that they were freezing roughly $90 million in pledged donations as long as President Biden was atop the ticket, according to two people briefed on the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the situation.

• Missing in Michigan: He was met by House Democrats, state lawmakers, union leaders and the award-winning actress Octavia Spencer when he arrived in Michigan on Friday. But the state’s highest profile Democrats — like Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Senators Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters — were not at his side. While all of them have been supportive of the president, they were also all otherwise occupied.

• Thursday’s news conference: More than 23 million people tuned in on major television networks on Thursday to watch Mr. Biden’s nearly hourlong appearance, according to Nielsen data — a very high number for a news program. His handling of the event did not seem to worsen Democrats’ fears about his viability, but it also did not silence the calls for him to drop out.

• Democratic defections: After he was done speaking on Thursday, three more House Democrats urged Mr. Biden to end his campaign, and Representative Mike Levin of California added his voice to those calls on Friday. Nearly 20 congressional Democrats have now done so.

• Standing by him: The president delivered a competent presentation on Thursday, and his performance in the unscripted setting heartened some of his supporters. One of his key allies, Representative James E. Clyburn, said on Friday that the party should stop talking about whether the president is fit to run and respect his decision to stay in the race. If he stepped aside, Mr. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, said he would “absolutely” endorse Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee.

• Trump’s V.P. pick: The former president said in a radio interview that he would prefer to announce who his running mate will be during the Republican National Convention “or just slightly before the convention, like Monday,” which is the day the convention begins. He appears to be giving more weight to political calculations in his selection.

Chris Cameron, Michael Gold, Shane Goldmacher, Michael M. Grynbaum and Nicholas Nehamas contributed reporting.

The PAC also confirmed it would support Next Generation PAC, which was aiming to raise $100 million for a top-ticket replacement to Biden.

Kennedy sent an apologetic text to a woman who accused him of sexual assault.

Ms. Cooney told The Post that Mr. Kennedy had called her twice on July 3 of this year, after the Vanity Fair article had run, and then sent her two text messages, which she also showed to The New York Times.

“I hope you are well,” he wrote in the first message. “Please call me if you have a moment.”

In the second, sent shortly after midnight, he wrote: “I read your description of an episode in which I touched you in an unwanted manner. I have no memory of this incident, but I apologize sincerely for anything I ever did that made you feel uncomfortable or anything I did or said that offended you or hurt your feelings.”

He said he hoped she would be willing to speak to him over the phone or in person.

Mr. Kennedy declined to comment on the messages or on Ms. Cooney’s allegations. In a podcast interview last week, after the Vanity Fair article came out, he declined to address her allegations but said he was not a “church boy.” He added, “I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world.”

Ms. Cooney did not respond to his outreach, and did not welcome it, she told The Times. “Sending a text at 12:33 a.m. is not considering his actions’ effects on someone else — me,” she said. “At that time, on Fourth of July weekend, the last thing I wanted to do was talk to him.”

She added: “He claims to have no memory of not one, not two, but three examples of his predatory behavior. He expects a societal pass and forgiveness for saying that he’s ‘no church boy.’ I have paid the cost for his sexual misconduct for decades.”

The fall after she graduated from college in 1998, Ms. Cooney said, she moved in with Mr. Kennedy’s family, in the home in Mount Kisco, N.Y., that he shared with his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, and their children. Ms. Cooney was a weekend babysitter — the Kennedys had three children then (a fourth was born later) — and she worked as an intern in his law clinic at Pace.

Soon after she started working for the family, Ms. Cooney was sitting in the house’s kitchen with Mr. Kennedy and a volunteer for Riverkeeper — the environmental organization that Mr. Kennedy led — when she recalled feeling Mr. Kennedy move his hand up and down her leg underneath the table. She moved her leg away from his hand, she said. Later, she told the volunteer about the episode and wrote about it in her journal, she said.

Another time, she said, Mr. Kennedy came into her room shirtless and asked her to rub lotion on his back.

Ms. Cooney also described an incident when she was alone at the house with Mr. Kennedy. After she had gone into the kitchen pantry, she recounted, he came in behind her and put his hands on her backside, drawing them up along the sides of her body and along the sports bra she was wearing.

A few months later, after less than a year as the family’s babysitter, she moved out of the house.

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More than 23 million watched Biden’s news conference, beating the Oscars.

The television audience amounted to roughly 45 percent of the 51.3 million who watched the debate, according to Nielsen.

The president’s nearly hourlong appearance, at the NATO summit in Washington, was one of the most-watched telecasts of the year, outside of sporting events. It aired across several major TV networks, with ABC, CBS and NBC all pre-empting regular entertainment programming.

Millions more may have watched on digital news sites and social media platforms, which are, for the most part, not captured by Nielsen’s data.

Compared to his predecessors, Mr. Biden rarely grants solo news conferences, which added to the novelty of Thursday’s event.

Fox News attracted the largest audience of any network, 5.7 million, representing nearly a quarter of the overall television viewership. ABC was the highest-rated broadcaster, with five million viewers, possibly benefiting from a lead-in from “Jeopardy!,” the game show that aired immediately before Mr. Biden’s news conference.

Roughly four of five viewers were 55 or older, Nielsen said. ABC drew the largest audience among adults 25 to 54, the key demographic for advertisers in cable news.

Mr. Biden’s interview with George Stephanopoulos, which aired last Friday on ABC, was seen by 8.5 million viewers.

Speaking at Trump’s convention: former Democrats, a rancher and Trump employees.

The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee have yet to fully announce a speakers list for the convention, which starts on Monday in Milwaukee. The testimonials from “everyday Americans” are expected to be peppered in between elected officials and candidates, party officials and Mr. Trump’s family members, though the convention has not provided a schedule for when any of its invited guests will speak.

On the list announced Friday is Linda Fornos, an immigrant from Nicaragua who attended Mr. Trump’s rally last month in Las Vegas, where she said she had been repeatedly disappointed by Democrats she had supported previously, including Mr. Biden. The Trump campaign has made winning over Latino voters a priority this year, particularly in battleground states like Arizona and Nevada with sizable Hispanic populations.

Also on the list is Robert Bartels Jr., known as Bobby, an official in a New York union who attended Mr. Trump’s visit with construction workers during the former president’s trial in Manhattan and said he was a “lifelong Democrat." Mr. Trump has pressed for the votes of blue-collar union workers since 2016 and has sought to divide them from union leaders who often support Democrats.

Annette Albright, a Black woman and a former school employee who convention officials said was a “lifelong Democrat,” spoke earlier this year at a town hall in North Carolina hosted by the political organization Moms for Liberty.

With polls showing backing for Mr. Biden slipping among Black voters, long a key Democratic constituency, Mr. Trump has been eager to highlight how he has capitalized, at times in clumsy ways.

Last month, the Trump campaign held an event at a Black church in Detroit where the crowd included a sizable number of white people. The pastor of the church, Lorenzo Sewell, will also speak at the convention next week.

And the convention will give the stage to Shabbos Kestenbaum, one of six Jewish students who sued Harvard University for discrimination. Mr. Kestenbaum is an Orthodox Jew who attended Harvard Divinity School, and the lawsuit claims that Harvard became a bastion of antisemitism, particularly in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel last October.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly insisted that Jews who vote for Democrats are insufficiently loyal to Israel or to their cultural and religious beliefs, a remark that critics have said revives an antisemitic trope that Jews have a “dual loyalty” and are not sufficiently loyal to their own countries.

Immigration will also be a dominant issue at the convention, and several people on the “ordinary Americans” list are expected to discuss it, including Michael Morin, the brother of Rachel Morin, 37, who the authorities say was raped and killed while jogging last year by an undocumented immigrant. Jim Chilton, an Arizona rancher whose property abuts the United States’ border with Mexico, and who has previously campaigned alongside Mr. Trump, will also speak.

A number of speakers will also discuss inflation and the economy, helping emphasize Mr. Trump’s contention that Mr. Biden’s policies are hurting business owners while doing little to address the cost of living. They include Sarah Workman, a single mother from Arizona who works two jobs, and Benjamin Josephs, a small-business owner in Michigan, according to the announcement from campaign and convention officials.

Not all of the speakers announced so far appear to serve thematic aims. Last month, Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden exchanged words at the debate over which of them had the better golf game, a fixation that Mr. Trump has since carried over to social media.

The convention will feature two employees of Mr. Trump’s golf properties: John Nieporter, the head golf professional at Mr. Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach, Fla., who has served as Mr. Trump’s caddie; and Carrie Ruiz, the golf general manager at his club in Doral, Fla., where Mr. Trump held a rally this week.

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Meta rolls back some restrictions on Trump’s Instagram and Facebook accounts.

The move further returns Mr. Trump’s social media accounts to what they had been before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. At the time, Mr. Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts were indefinitely suspended on the grounds that his posts ran the risk of inciting more violence. Last year, Meta reinstated Mr. Trump’s accounts, but with the restrictions.

As of Friday, those penalties are no longer applicable.

“We believe that the American people should be able to hear from the nominees for President on the same basis,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said in a statement. He said the penalties placed on Mr. Trump’s accounts had been “a response to extreme and extraordinary circ*mstances” after Jan. 6, and were no longer needed.

Presidential nominees still need to abide by Meta’s terms of service, however, the company said.

In a statement, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, Charles Kretchmer Lutvak, said that removing the restrictions on Mr. Trump’s accounts was “a direct attack on our safety and our democracy,” adding that the decision “will allow Trump and his MAGA allies to reach more Americans with their fundamentally undemocratic, un-American misinformation.”

At the Republican National Convention next week, Mr. Trump is expected to accept the party’s nomination for president. The Democratic National Convention is in August, though calls from prominent Democrats for President Biden to step aside as the nominee have complicated that process. Mr. Biden has maintained that he has no plans to drop out.

Axios previously reported on Meta’s policy update.

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Biden’s visit to Detroit draws few high-profile Michigan Democrats.

Crain’s Detroit Business reported on Wednesday that Ms. Whitmer instead was scheduled to attend the Sun Valley Conference of tech and media executives in Idaho. In a statement on X soon after Mr. Biden landed, Ms. Whitmer wrote, “Motor City is all in for Biden-Harris.”

Ms. Whitmer, a co-chair of the Biden campaign, has ruled out running for president this year, even if Mr. Biden were to drop out, but that has not ended speculation about her candidacy. In a CNN interview on Wednesday, she said it “wouldn’t hurt” if Mr. Biden underwent a cognitive exam to reassure supporters of his health and fitness.

Also missing from Mr. Biden’s campaign event were Michigan’s two Democratic senators, Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, as well as Representative Elissa Slotkin, the leading Democratic candidate to fill the seat of Ms. Stabenow, who is retiring. Ms. Stabenow and Mr. Peters wrote statements of support for the president on social media soon after he landed, and they were shared by the Biden campaign.

In a video call with donors on Tuesday, Ms. Slotkin had said that Mr. Biden was trailing his rival, Donald J. Trump in Michigan, and noted that she was running for the Senate because Ms. Stabenow, 74, was “doing a radical thing and passing the torch.”

Robyn Bryan, a spokeswoman for Ms. Stabenow, said the senator was out of town for the event. A spokeswoman for Mr. Peters said the senator had previous commitments and could not be in Detroit on Friday. Representatives of Ms. Whitmer and Ms. Slotkin did not immediately respond to requests for comment on their absence.

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The Sunrise Movement, a leading environmental group, calls on Biden to step aside.

“Joe Biden’s next climate legacy-defining act must be to pass the torch to a new nominee,” Aru Shiney-Ajay, the executive director of the Sunrise Movement, said in a statement.

“Another Trump presidency would cause catastrophic and irreversible damage to our climate,” she said. “After speaking with young people around the country over the last few weeks, I’m concerned that Joe Biden isn’t positioned to mobilize young people and win in November.”

The Biden campaign underlined the president’s commitment to fighting global warming. “No president has and will fight harder to address the climate crisis than President Biden,” Seth Schuster, a campaign spokesman, said in a statement. He said Mr. Biden was “proud to have passed the most significant climate legislation in American history during his first term, and will ensure we continue the essential work to save our planet by defeating climate-denier-in-chief Donald Trump this November.”

Sunrise is the first major environmental group to publicly urge Mr. Biden to abandon his presidential campaign. It follows a highly anticipated news conference that Mr. Biden held on Thursday night in which the president said he was determined to run for re-election. “And I think I’m the best qualified to win,” he said.

His campaign had hoped Mr. Biden’s performance would help quell the concerns of Democrats and donors worried about the ability of Mr. Biden, 81, to beat Mr. Trump, 78, and to serve another four years.

The Sunrise Movement had not endorsed Mr. Biden’s re-election bid, in part because many members oppose the president’s strong support for Israel in its war against Hamas. In recent weeks, doubts about Mr. Biden’s electability have also emerged.

Sunrise Movement officials said the organization had been internally discussing whether to make its concerns public since Mr. Biden’s performance in a June debate against Mr. Trump, during which Mr. Biden stumbled repeatedly.

Ms. Shiney-Ajay said stepping aside was the best way for Mr. Biden to preserve his climate legacy, which includes the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that is pumping $370 billion into clean energy, and the creation of the American Climate Corps, which is training thousands of young people for green jobs.

She noted that in 2020, the organization’s volunteers had contacted 3.5 million young voters, urging them to vote for Mr. Biden. Since the June debate, she said, the “already low enthusiasm” for Mr. Biden among young people has continued to drop.

“To be very clear, regardless of where the process ends, Sunrise’s plan this fall is the same: organize like hell to defeat Donald Trump,” she said. But, Ms. Shiney-Ajay added, “With another ticket that energizes young volunteers, we could contact up to twice as many voters this fall.”

The group is considered an important player in the environmental movement. In the 2020 election, Sunrise initially endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. But once Mr. Biden clinched the Democratic nomination, the Sunrise Movement and the Biden campaign forged an alliance that benefited both: Mr. Biden got needed support from young voters and Sunrise pushed Mr. Biden to be more ambitious on climate.

Since Mr. Biden has taken office, the Sunrise Movement has pressured him to halt new oil and gas drilling. It has been more willing than some mainstream environmental organizations to criticize the president when he took positions they opposed, like approving the development of a huge oil project in Alaska known as Willow.

Mr. Biden has worked hard to court young climate-minded voters, and the administration had still hoped to win the endorsem*nt of the Sunrise Movement by emphasizing the stark contrast between the president and Mr. Trump when it comes to climate change.

Mr. Trump routinely disparages and distorts climate science, and has pledged to “terminate” every one of Mr. Biden’s climate regulations. In April, Mr. Trump asked oil and gas lobbyists for $1 billion for his 2024 campaign so he could retake the White House and erase President Biden’s climate regulations, according to several people in attendance at the meeting.

Other leading environmental groups said they continued to support Mr. Biden.

“No president in history has taken more action on climate than Joe Biden,” Ben Jealous, the executive director of the Sierra Club, said in a statement. “We will work tirelessly to re-elect President Biden come November to guarantee Americans their right to clean air, clean water and a livable future — something we know Donald Trump wants to destroy.”

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