June 30, 2024, presidential election news

We’ve wrapped up our live coverage for the day. Scroll through the posts below to read more on the 2024 presidential campaigns.

Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin said there was a “big problem” with President Joe Biden’s debate performance and that “very honest and serious and rigorous conversations” are now happening within the Democratic Party.

Raskin went on to say that regardless of what Biden ultimately decides on staying in the race, “our party is going to be unified, and our party also needs him at the very center of our deliberations in our campaign.”

“Whether he is a candidate or someone else is the candidate, he is going to be the keynote speaker at our convention,” Raskin added. “He will be the figure that we rally around to move forward.”

Raskin’s comments come as the Biden campaign works behind the scenes to push back on calls for Biden to leave the presidential race.

Former President Donald Trump arrives at a rally on June 28, in Chesapeake, Virginia. 

As nerves grew in the lead-up to the first general election debate of the cycle, some close to Donald Trump considered whether the former president might announce his running mate from the stage or shortly thereafter, should the evening take an unfavorable turn.

The wild-card scenario was one of several ideas for post-debate distractions batted around by Trump allies still rattled from the Republican’s uncontrolled first debate appearance in 2020. But that card would ultimately be left in the deck.

Rather than managing fallout over Trump’s performance at Thursday’s event, the former president and his team now face an unexpected challenge: keeping the attention on President Joe Biden while navigating a busy sprint to next month’s Republican National Convention, a time during which Trump will be sentenced for his felony convictions and must pick a running mate.

The confidence-shattering struggles of the 81-year-old incumbent have swallowed up the post-debate discourse, and the Democratic hand-wringing over the presumptive nominee’s capacity to fight on threatens to overshadow Biden’s campaign for the foreseeable future.

Taking a victory lap from a rally in Chesapeake, Virginia, on Friday, Trump called Biden “grossly incompetent” while poking fun at the president’s weeklong debate prep at Camp David.

Behind the scenes, Trump’s advisers are plotting how best to wield Biden’s underwhelming display to maximum effect in hopes of shifting momentum in a race unmoved for months by external forces. Asked whether clips of Biden from Thursday night would make their way into upcoming ads, Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita told Fox News: “Duh.”

Read more about the Trump campaign’s strategy amid Biden’s debate fallout.

President Joe Biden is seen during the CNN Presidential debate in Atlanta on June 27.

The waves of panic coursing through the Democratic Party in the wake of President Joe Biden’s alarming debate performance have left party elders and officials scrambling this weekend to answer two distinct questions:

“A true succession plan does not exist,” a senior Democratic adviser to the Biden campaign told CNN on Saturday. “That’s what makes all of this not just heartbreaking, but very problematic.”

New research is being conducted by Democrats throughout the weekend and into early next week in an effort to gain a deeper picture at the extent of the political fallout, particularly in key contests that will determine whether the party can win back its House majority and maintain its narrow control of the Senate. 

A second longtime adviser said the only way Biden would even consider stepping aside — a move that is still very much an open question — is if he was presented serious data showing he would not only likely lose his reelection bid, but also endanger House, Senate and competitive local races across the country.

The Biden campaign has long had polling that found Democrats would still support down-ballot candidates even if they didn’t vote for Biden. If the president’s debate setback would make some of these voters far less inclined to vote at all — handing a turnout advantage to Donald Trump and Republicans — Biden could be confronted with a starker reality.

“The party is in President Biden’s hands – for better or worse,” a Democratic senator told CNN, speaking on condition of anonymity. “He deserves our respect and space to reach any decision.”

President Joe Biden speaks during the debate in Atlanta on June 27.

Biden campaign pollster Molly Murphy argued that while President Joe Biden’s debate performance was “not his best night,” it will not necessarily determine the outcome of the race.

Speaking on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki,” Murphy admitted the president did not have a good debate night.

She also insisted the president can still win, despite a CBS News and YouGov poll conducted after Thursday’s debate that finds nearly three quarters of registered voters say Biden should not be running for re-election (72%), up 9 points since February.

The CBS and YouGov poll did not include a head-to-head measure between the two candidates.

Murphy also defended a campaign memo that described the concern over Biden’s performance as an “overblown media narrative.”

“In modern campaigns, singular moments do not spell the outcome of any race,” the pollster told Psaki.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore speaks on June 7, in Landover, Maryland.

Democrat Maryland Gov. Wes Moore says President Joe Biden should continue his reelection campaign despite his poor performance in Thursday night’s CNN debate.

Biden “is not going to take himself out of this race, nor should he. He has been a remarkable partner,” Moore told CBS’ Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday.

Moore also told Brennan he would not pursue the Democratic nomination if Biden were to take himself out of the race.

The governor said he will “proudly” support the president in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention in August.

Fetterman also standing by Biden: Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania is doubling down on his support of President Joe Biden’s reelection bid.

“There’s no value in any of those things,” Fetterman said of the calls for Biden to step aside. The senator said there was “that same kind of freak out” over his own performance in a 2022 debate with Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz, which Fetterman participated in despite suffering a near-fatal stroke only months beforehand. Fetterman eventually won the pivotal Senate race, and says Biden will do the same.

Fetterman also addressed the progressive “Abandon Biden” campaign, calling it “dumb.”  “If you’re willing to walk away from Joe Biden, you’re helping Trump,” he said.

CNN’s Jalen Beckford contributed reporting to this post.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended President Joe Biden Sunday amid calls for him to step aside following his halting debate performance last Thursday. 

Asked if she shares concerns with some House and Senate Democrats who are worried Biden could be a drag on their races and cost the party’s ability to retake the House, Pelosi said it’s had an “opposite effect” in terms of the congressional races.  

“We definitely will win the House of Representatives,” she said. “When they saw the performance of Trump, donors doubled down and said we absolutely have to have the Congress.” 

“Members are always concerned about the top of the ticket, that’s just the way it is,” she added. 

Remember: Democrats performed better in the 2022 midterm elections than many pundits and analysts anticipated, retaining control of the Senate and minimizing losses in the House of Representatives despite facing headwinds typical of the party that controls the White House during a midterm.

Sen. JD Vance speaks during a news conference on May 22, in Washington, DC.

Ohio Sen. JD Vance argued Sunday that if Democrats replace President Joe Biden as their nominee, it would be an “incredible insult” to primary voters who selected him.

“It would be an incredible insult to Democratic voters to have this primary process, that was effectively rigged in favor of Joe Biden, and then at the last minute, when Joe Biden has a disastrous debate performance, tried to switch them out,” Vance said on Fox News.

Vance, who is on the shortlist for potentially becoming Trump’s vice presidential pick, said the problems with Democrats go beyond just one bad debate.

“The problem is not that Joe Biden had a bad debate,” Vance said.

After the debate, Vance told Fox News that “it’s too late” for Democrats to change their nominee and “this is the choice” they offered the American people.

Sen. Lindsey Graham speaks to reporters after the debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in Atlanta on June 27.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham says President Joe Biden’s debate performance wasn’t just a bad night, but reflective of his whole presidency.

Graham said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Biden is a “decent man” but a “failed president.”

Graham then touted Donald Trump’s performance saying, “I thought he had a very good night. People who watched the debate thought the same thing too. At the end of the day, he was strong, he was clear, he was coherent.”

Trump made more than 30 false claims during CNN’s presidential debate — far more than Biden — but that was at-times overshadowed by the president’s halting performance.

Graham also claimed “accountability” is coming for Biden after the 2024 election, whether or not he continues his campaign. 

“This country is going to have a resetting here and, using the Biden standard of glorifying political prosecutions, pandora’s box has been opened. Whether he steps down or not, accountability is coming to him,” said Graham after alleging, without evidence, that the Biden administration and the president himself have been privy to a series of crimes. 

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum speaks to reporters on May 14, in New York City. 

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum on Sunday said he would commit to accepting the 2024 election results if “they’re free and fair” – hedging his answer like former President Donald Trump during last week’s debate with President Joe Biden.

During last week’s debate, Trump said he’d accept the results of the 2024 election if it’s “fair and legal,” but also repeated his lies about fraud in the 2020 election.

Remember: There is no evidence of any fraud even close to widespread enough to have changed the outcome in any state during the last presidential contest. In addition to falsely saying the election was “rigged” against him, Trump — and many members of the GOP — have made unfounded claims undermining the integrity of US elections more broadly.

On potential VP selection: Burgum, who’s on Trump’s shortlist to be vice president, remained coy about any conversations he may have had with Trump about his potential selection.

“That would be between the president and I,” he said

President Joe Biden participates in the CNN presidential debate in Atlanta on June 27.

A new poll from CBS News and YouGov conducted after Thursday’s debate finds that nearly three quarters of registered voters say President Joe Biden should not be running for re-election (72%), up 9 points since February.

Nearly nine in 10 who say so (86%) consider his age a key reason why he should not be running, and 72% say Biden does not have the mental and cognitive health to serve as president, up seven points since earlier in June. Asked more directly whether Biden should step aside as the Democratic nominee to give another Democrat a chance to run, 64% of voters said he should.

The poll does not hold positive news on this front for former president Donald Trump either. About half (49%) say he does not have the mental and cognitive health to serve as president, and 54% say he should not be running for president. 

A closer look at the numbers: Among Biden’s own partisans, 54% of Democrats say he should be running for president, while independents (82%) and Republicans (90%) are generally unified in thinking he should not be running.

Trump holds stronger backing among Republicans than Biden does among Democrats: 85% of Republicans say Trump should be running for president. That drops to 43% among independents and 10% among Democrats. 

Among all voters who say Trump should not be running, more cite his felony conviction (91%) and the decisions he might make in office (89%) than his age (62%) or concerns about him campaigning effectively (44%). There is not a large enough sample of Republicans who said Trump should not run to look at their results on questions about why. 

The CBS/YouGov poll was conducted June 28-29 among 1,134 registered voters and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.

President Joe Biden participates in CNN's presidential debate in Atlanta on June 27.

The Democratic donor class is in crisis, racked by anxiety over what — if anything — the party’s wealthiest backers can do to reinvigorate or replace President Joe Biden after his alarming debate performance.

As the Biden campaign commissions new polling to assess the damage, the vast universe of wealthy Biden backers and their political whisperers has split along three lines:

There does seem to be agreement among all sides over one thing: Ultimately, the decision will be Biden’s to make. There is no appetite for a clash at the Democratic National Convention this summer in Chicago — partly because there is no clear apparatus for pushing Biden aside, but mostly due to concerns that a floor fight, no matter the outcome, would do more harm than good in the party’s quest for the White House.

Read more about how Democratic donors are reacting to Biden’s performance

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

President Joe Biden had a weak debate performance but he’s the best option for Democratic nominee to beat former President Donald Trump, Biden campaign co-chairs Sen. Chris Coons and Rep. Jim Clyburn said Sunday.

“He had a scratchy, rough voice. He answered a few questions in ways that were not the most forceful,” Coons acknowledged on ABC’s “This Week.”

Coons added that since the debate, Biden has given strong remarks at events in North Carolina and New York that have reassured voters he should continue to run in this presidential election cycle.

“No one has been a stronger and more consequential president in my lifetime than Joe Biden,” Coons said.

Clyburn said bluntly on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday that it was a “bad performance” at the debate, but said it looked to him like the result of over-preparation.

When asked about whether he would support Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee if Biden stepped aside, Clyburn said, “I’m for Biden-Harris in this campaign and I will look at – I’m sure Biden won’t be there the next time, which Harris might be. That’s for the next election.”

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden attend a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, on June 28.

President Joe Biden’s campaign has raised more than $33 million since Thursday, a campaign official said, as the president’s team seeks to project strength by highlighting one of its bright spots following a poor debate performance.

That is up from the $27 million the campaign said it had raised by yesterday morning, with $26 million coming from grassroots donations, according to the campaign official.

Biden spent the past two days on a fundraising blitz in New York and New Jersey, where he acknowledged his disappointing performance and vowed that he could win in November.

The campaign official said nearly half of the grassroots donations “were from first-time donors to the campaign this cycle,” noting that “Thursday was our best grassroots fundraising day ever, while Friday was the second best.”

That argument is aimed at pushing back on those who suggest Biden is losing support in the fallout from the debate. 

President Joe Biden’s campaign sent an email late Saturday rejecting calls for Biden to step down from the presidential race, saying that would provide “the best possible way for Donald Trump to win.”

The email continued: “And at the end of the day, we’d switch to candidates who would, according to polls, be less likely to win than Joe Biden — the only person ever to defeat Donald Trump.”

Since the first presidential debate, the campaign touted that it has raised $27 million in the last two days, and has had more people sign up for volunteer shifts and campaign jobs. The email also reiterated that Biden’s debate performance should not overshadow all the work he has done since he was sworn into the Oval Office.

The email comes after several Democratic donors raised concerns about Biden continuing to run in this presidential election cycle.

Over the weekend, the editorial boards of The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution have each called on Biden to step down from the race.

US President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden, alongside granddaughters Natalie, left, and Finnegan, second from right, make their way to board Air Force One before departing McGuire Air Force Base in Burlington, New Jersey on June 29.

President Joe Biden will be joined by members of his family at Camp David over the weekend for a long-planned photo shoot, multiple sources said Saturday, on the heels of a poor debate performance against former President Donald Trump that has thrust his campaign in turmoil and set off widespread panic among Democrats.

While the family is expected to discuss the events of the past week, multiple senior advisers insisted to CNN on Saturday that the gathering was not aimed at discussing whether the president would remain in the race — even as he is facing immense pressure from some to drop out. Publicly, White House and campaign aides — and the president himself — have all maintained there is no question that Biden will remain in the race. 

Still, it is well known that Biden’s family, more so than his closest advisers, holds significant influence over decisions regarding the president’s political future. Despite senior Biden advisers stressing that the weekend gathering was not intended to discuss whether Biden will seek a second term, nothing would preclude the family from ultimately having such conversations in private.

The family is expected to be photographed by renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz, one senior Biden official told CNN. Biden’s children and grandchildren are expected to be at the presidential retreat, a separate source familiar with the gathering said. 

Former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump walks onstage during a campaign rally in Chesapeake, Virginia, on June 28.

Top advisers to Donald Trump are plotting an overhaul of the Republican Party platform that will dramatically slash its size and refocus the GOP around the former president’s agenda for a second term.

A memo from Trump campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles dated Thursday criticized past platforms as too long and heavily influenced by special interests and outside groups. A “clear, concise and easily digestible” platform will make it easier for voters to understand and harder for political opponents to attack, they wrote.

The memo, obtained Saturday by CNN, was first reported by the New York Times.

The party’s most recent platform, crafted in 2016 and reapproved in 2020, spans 66 pages. A person familiar with the planning said the goal for the upcoming platform is a concise document that is “a couple dozen pages,” written in more clear language and will likely reflect Trump’s top priorities.

Hot-button issues ahead of convention: The memo comes amid intensifying anxiety from conservative groups over the direction of the platform ahead of next month’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. There is especially concern among anti-abortion groups that Thursday’s memo is signaling Trump intends to remove the platform’s longstanding commitment to a federal abortion ban and an amendment to the US Constitution giving the unborn the same rights as a person.

The existing platform also lays out the party’s opposition to gay marriage and new gun restrictions, and also embraces changes to Medicare and Social Security for people under age 55 — some of which has become fodder for Democratic messaging in recent election cycles.

Former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden debate at CNN's Atlanta studios on June 27.

President Joe Biden’s campaign has worked feverishly behind the scenes to keep the Democratic wagons circled around the president, with advisers taking note of any current or former elected officials speaking ill of the president or publicly suggesting he should step aside.

Former Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who served alongside Biden in the Senate for decades, dashed off a pointed letter to friends after the debate.

“All incumbent Democratic Senators should write to Biden asking him to release his delegates and step aside so the convention can choose a new candidate,” Harkin wrote, according to a copy of the letter obtained by CNN. “A couple of Governors may need to do the same.”

Harkin, 84, said there was still time for a course correction and a new Democratic ticket, which he believes “would energize the party at all levels and capture the general public’s attention – many of whom would like an alternative to Trump.”

Obama urges party to stay united: At a fundraising event in New York on Friday, where former President Barack Obama was raising money for House Democrats, whispers rippled through the crowd over whether Obama could implore Biden to step aside for the good of the party. Obama did not entertain such a notion during his brief remarks, focusing instead on the need for the party to stay unified, energized and focused on drawing a sharp contrast between Democratic and Republican rule.

For years, the relationship between Obama and Biden and their circle of advisers was strained by Obama’s decision to support Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid in 2015 and urge his former vice president not to run. This moment “is even more fraught,” one longtime Obama adviser said Saturday.

CNN’s Arlette Saenz contributed reporting to this post.

President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, on June 28.

President Joe Biden gave a rousing speech before a crowd of supporters in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Friday, conceding he’s “not a young man” but making it clear he has no intention of leaving the 2024 race for the White House.

“I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to,” Biden said, smiling as the crowd cheered. “But I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth.”

The president said he had given his word “as a Biden that I wouldn’t run again if I didn’t believe with all my heart and soul I could do this job.”

“Yes you can!” the crowd chanted. 

Biden came out forcefully against Trump, calling the former president a “genuine threat to this nation. He’s a threat to our freedom, he’s a threat to our democracy, he’s literally a threat for everything America stands for.”

He called Trump a “one-man crime wave” who has “no respect for women or the law” and attacked the former president’s debate showing, repeatedly hitting him for falsehoods.

 CNN’s Michael Williams contributed to this post.

Former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden debate at CNN's Atlanta studios on June 27.

Both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump made false and misleading claims during CNN’s presidential debate on Thursday — but Trump did so far more than Biden, just like in their debates in 2020.

Trump made more than 30 false claims at the Thursday debate. They included numerous claims that CNN and others have already debunked during the current presidential campaign or prior.

Trump’s claims: Trump’s repeat falsehoods included his assertions that some Democratic-led states allow babies to be executed after birth, that every legal scholar and everybody in general wanted Roe v. Wade overturned, that there were no terror attacks during his presidency, that Iran didn’t fund terror groups during his presidency, that the US has provided more aid to Ukraine than Europe has, that Biden for years referred to Black people as “super predators,” that Biden is planning to quadruple people’s taxes, that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi turned down 10,000 National Guard troops for the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, that Americans don’t pay the cost of his tariffs on China and other countries, that Europe accepts no American cars, that he is the president who got the Veterans Choice program through Congress, and that fraud marred the results of the 2020 election.

Trump also added some new false claims, such as his assertions that the US currently has its biggest budget deficit and its biggest trade deficit with China. Both records actually occurred under Trump.

Biden’s claims: Biden made at least nine false or misleading claims in the debate. He used false numbers while describing two of his key Medicare policies, falsely claimed that no US troops had been killed on his watch, repeated his usual misleading figure about billionaires’ tax rates, baselessly claimed that Trump wants to eliminate Social Security, falsely said that the unemployment rate was 15% when he took office, inaccurately said that the Border Patrol union had endorsed him before clarifying that he was talking about agents’ support for the border bill he had backed, and exaggerated Trump’s 2020 comments about the possibility of treating Covid-19 by injecting disinfectant.

Read a detailed fact check from CNN’s reporting team.