White House slams ‘absolutely false’ report Biden is considering walking away

President Joe Biden reportedly told a key ally that he has doubts about whether he can continue the campaign, but the White House has fiercely denied the account.

The unnamed key ally said Biden knows his next public appearances must go well, according to a report from the New York Times, and that he knows the position he is in after a disastrous debate performance last week in Atlanta. Biden has a public White House event on Tuesday, along with campaign events throughout the holiday weekend, and is scheduled to sit down with ABC News for an interview on Friday.

“He knows if he has two more events like that, we’re in a different place," the ally said, referring to Biden's widely panned debate performance.

The White House denied the report as "absolutely false," with White House spokesman Andrew Bates posting on X that they would have told the New York Times so if they had given more time to comment.

Shortly after the White House denied the New York Times report, CNN published its own story claiming that Biden told an ally that he knows his campaign is in a vulnerable state and that events in the coming weeks will be key to the fate of his candidacy.

The anonymous ally told CNN that the scenario in which Biden would know it is time to call it quits is if “the polls are plummeting, the fundraising is drying up, and the interviews are going badly."

Biden also reportedly told the ally that he has "done way too much foreign policy," partially blaming his poor debate performance on exhaustion from the trip to France and Italy at the beginning of June. The president returned to the White House on June 16, 11 days before the debate, and spent the seven days before the debate, which was held on June 27, preparing at Camp David.

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The reports from the New York Times and CNN come hours after the Biden campaign sent an all-staff memorandum seeking to get ahead of an expected bruising poll from the New York Times and Siena College by pointing to polling that showed Biden had been only slightly harmed by the debate.

Biden has faced mounting calls to step aside from the campaign after his poor performance against former President Donald Trump, with Democratic internal polling obtained by Puck News on Tuesday showing Biden taking a significant hit across the board after the debate and trailing Trump in typically Democratic states New Mexico and Virginia.