Biden refuses to accept just how much trouble his campaign is in

President Joe Biden appears to be in denial with just how seriously his recent debate performance against Donald Trump has hurt his 2024 campaign.

In an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that aired Friday, Biden was confronted with questions about the fallout of his stumbling debate performance: polling that shows Trump with an increasing lead, voters and Democratic colleagues calling for Biden to step aside, and, to top it all off, an already abysmal approval rating of 36%.

To that, Biden responded: Not in my world.

On the issue of falling support shown in recent polls, Biden questioned the accuracy of the data and leaned on internal polling that he claimed still put the 2024 election at a “toss-up.”

“You think polling data is accurate as it used to be?” Biden said.

The president also disagreed when Stephanopoulos pointed out his low approval rating. “Mr. President, I’ve never seen a president of 36% approval get re-elected,” Stephanopoulos said.

“Well, I don’t believe that’s my approval rating — that’s not what our polls show,” Biden responded.

According to FiveThirtyEight’s weighed average, Biden has reached his lowest approval of his presidency at just 36.9%.

At one point, Biden exaggerated the extent to which he was behind Trump in The New York Times-Siena College poll before the debate.

“New York Times had me behind before anything having to do with this race, had me hind — behind 10 points. Ten points they had me behind,” he said.

Biden was actually down only roughly 3 to 4 percentage points at a time, depending on whether it was among registered or likely voters. According to their post-debate poll, Trump now leads between six to eight points, depending on the same factor. It is Trump’s largest lead recorded in a Times/Siena poll since 2015.

On the growing calls from Democratic lawmakers for the president to step down, Biden said he’s met with many colleagues, and none of them have advised him to suspend his campaign.

“They’re not going to do that,” Biden told Stephanopoulos when asked if he would consider stepping out of the race if people close to him asked him to do so. So far, four House Democrats have called for Biden to drop out, and Sen. Mark Warner is reportedly trying to organize his colleagues to push for Biden to withdraw from the race.

Biden appeared to dismiss Warner’s rallying of senators, saying that the lawmaker tried to “get the nomination, too.” Warner was last expected to make a run for president in 2008.

Biden repeatedly said in the interview that the only one who could get him to step down was the “Lord Almighty.”

All of the warning signs that have appeared since the June 27 debate were merely propped up by the press, Biden said.

A spokesperson for the Biden campaign told us that the president’s interview with Stephanopoulos was just one of many moments that showcased that Biden is the right candidate to go against Trump.

Biden did acknowledge that he didn’t perform well during his debate against Trump.

But the president said the evening was simply a “bad night” for him and that he failed to “trust his instincts” when debating against a “pathological liar.”

“Can I run the 100 in 10 flat? No,” Biden said. “But I’m still in good shape.”