The White House has described as false the reports that President Joe Biden is contemplating backing out from the Presidential race. White House Senior Deputy Press Secretary and Deputy Assistant to the President, Andrew Bates, stated that the New York Times report was untrue.

Posting on X, Bates wrote: “This claim is false and if we had been given more than 7 minutes we could have communicated this before it was publicized. That claim is false. If the New York Times had provided us with more than 7 minutes to comment we would have told them so.”

Bates stated this in his reaction to a report by the New York Times that Biden told his allies that he is considering quitting the Presidential race. The newspaper cited an anonymous source saying of Biden, “He knows if he has two more events like that, we’re in a different place,” referring to last week’s Presidential debate in which Biden did poorly.

The newspaper noted that the President’s discussion is the first inkling that he is seriously contemplating whether he can recover after a discouraging performance on the debate stage in Atlanta. New York Times quoted Biden’s ally as saying that the President understood that he faced a serious battle to persuade voters, donors, and the political class that his debate performance was an anomaly.

It added that President Biden had told a key ally that he knew he might not be able to rescue his candidacy if he could not convince the public in the coming days that he was up for the job after a disastrous debate performance last week.

The President, who the ally emphasized is still deeply in the fight for re-election, understands that his next few appearances heading into the holiday weekend must go well, particularly an interview scheduled for Friday with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News and campaign stops in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

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