We are ending our live coverage for now. Eric Sorensen: 'I am hopeful President Biden will step aside'
The Democrat congressman becomes the second senior lawmaker to call for Biden to stand down following his latest gaffes.Biden blew it with his 'meme-tastic' Putin momentIt was Biden’s big screen test but, in truth, he rather blew it before it began. A couple of hours before he took the stage, the president had a"Putin" moment – mistakenly introducing Ukraine's President Zelenskyy as"President Putin".Biden might have led a successful NATO conference but it was a meme-tastic moment to define his performance for the screen-scrolling generation, the very one he needs onside.His difficulty, by now, is an audience that can't hear one sentence for the anticipation of what he'll say next.
His problem now is that every sign of infirmity, large or small, feeds into an established narrative – one that tells the story of a stubborn old president, cosseted by a government machine not listening to a growing crescendo of concern for his mental fitness.As a politician talking politics, he sounded as comfortable as it gets at the age of 81. On the subject matter, he sounded across his brief and finished with the certainty that he was the"best qualified to govern and to win".
Joe Biden is asked what qualities his vice president has for the top job and he replies:"I wouldn't have picked her unless she was qualified to be president. From the very beginning, I made no bones about that. She's qualified to be president."The President - in the very first question he took from the media at the NATO conference - confused Kamala Harris with Donald Trump.