A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
President Biden's fitness for office has been questioned since that debate two weeks ago, and that scrutiny has not eased up.
SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
No, it hasn't. Many fellow Democrats have asked him to remove his name from the November ballot. And Democrats and Republicans alike were closely watching a news conference last night where Biden early on made this stumble.
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PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president, but I think she's not qualified to be president.
PFEIFFER: Of course, he meant to say Vice President Harris.
MARTÍNEZ: There were also a lot of questions about whether Harris would be a better candidate this time around. NPR White House correspondent Asma Khalid was there. Wow, must-see TV yesterday, Asma. What did the president say last night?
ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: Well, he said a lot, A. You know, he doesn't do a whole lot of solo press conferences. This was, in fact, the first one that he did since last year. It was substantive. He took questions from a total of 11 reporters, including myself. He spoke for nearly an hour. And I will say, a lot of the questions centered around his presidential candidacy and whether he ought to drop out or whether he'd allow for his pledged delegates at the Democratic convention to potentially vote for someone else. Here's how he answered that.
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BIDEN: And so tomorrow, if all of a sudden I show up at the convention and everybody says we want somebody else, that's the democratic process. (Whispering) It's not going to happen.
KHALID: You know, I think, broadly, he made it clear that he's staying in this presidential race. I asked him directly about something that he said back during the 2020 campaign. He had referred to himself as a bridge candidate, a transition to a younger generation of Democrats. He insisted that the gravity of the situation had changed. He said he would not drop out of the race even if his team hypothetically showed him that his vice president, Kamala Harris, could fare better against Trump.
MARTÍNEZ: OK, now, there was a lot at stake for President Biden last night, so how did he do?
KHALID: Well, there was that notable stumble you mentioned right out of the gate where he misspoke about his vice president. Earlier in the day also, at a NATO event, he mistakenly referred to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as President Putin. I was in the room for that, and I will say it was visibly awkward, where a number of European leaders were onstage and people in the room gasped.
But throughout the press conference itself, Biden, you know, he remained calm. He didn't lose his temper, even when he was asked some personal questions, like whether he ought to have more neurological testing or whether he was bringing down the standing of the United States in the world. I will say, A, there were a lot of eyes, as we all know, on Biden last night. And the big question was whether this debate performance would exacerbate or alleviate Democratic angst in the Democratic Party.
MARTÍNEZ: OK, so on that, Asma, I mean, did this buy him some time with his own party?
KHALID: I think we'll have to see how the party responds in the coming hours. I mean, will one presser really alleviate the concerns from that poor debate? I don't know. After the debate, another congressman publicly said for the first time that Biden should step down. That's Jim Himes of Connecticut. He's the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. He said he did not think Biden could beat Trump.
You know, the president is headed to the key battleground state of Michigan today for a campaign event. He's got a big TV interview on Monday. A lot of eyes are going to be on him for every event and interview that he's giving in the coming days. And a key question I have is if the performance last night is sufficient for Biden's team, if it sort of emboldens him while at the same time not erasing the concerns people in his party have, which keeps the focus on Biden at a time when Democrats want the selection to be focused on the Republican opponent, Donald Trump.
MARTÍNEZ: That's NPR's Asma Khalid. Thank you very much.
KHALID: Good to talk to you.
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MARTÍNEZ: All right, despite President Biden's dismal debate performance two weeks ago, the race for the presidency remains unchanged.
PFEIFFER: That's the big takeaway from a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll out this morning.
MARTÍNEZ: Joining us to discuss the results of the poll as NPR senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro. So is all that Democratic angst unfounded?
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Well, you know, I mean, there's still a lot for Democrats to be concerned about, clearly, with the way Biden is able to present himself. But despite that bad debate performance, as you noted, and the multiple Democratic members who now say they're worried about Biden at the top of the ticket, the race is statistically unchanged according to our poll. It found that Biden actually gained a point from last month's Marist survey when it was 49-49, dead heat between him and Trump. Now it's Biden ever so narrowly ahead, 50-48. Biden does slip a little when third parties are introduced, with Trump ahead by just one point. But listen to what we're talking about here - two points, one point - all of that is within the poll's margin of error, as this race has been the entire time. And that's maybe the biggest conclusion here, that nothing has really changed wildly since the debate.
MARTÍNEZ: So how is he doing this?
MONTANARO: Well, President Biden is buoyed by older voters and college-educated white voters in particular. You know, this was true before the debate. It appears they've mostly stuck with him. And this is different than 2020, when Trump one college-educated white men, for example. These groups, in large measure, dislike Trump a lot. Importantly, they are among the highest propensity voters. You know, they vote at some of the highest rates of any group. So unlike with other groups Biden is struggling with - for example, younger voters, non-white voters - they're not likely to stay home, this group. You know, with younger voters and non-white voters, especially younger Latino and Black men, it isn't so much Biden versus Trump as it is Biden versus the couch.
MARTÍNEZ: Then, Domenico, other surveys have found that President Biden has slipped a little bit. So how do we square all of these things together?
MONTANARO: Well, you know, what pollsters say, and we all know this, is we're in a really hyperpolarized landscape. People have very locked-in views of both of these men, even though other national surveys, you're seeing the difference, you know, really be so marginal. You know, our poll and others generally have about a three to four point margin of error, meaning the results could be three points higher, could be three points lower. We can't tell how other polls are being conducted or weighting, you know, their surveys, but they might be conducting them somewhat slightly differently.
Within our poll, the one thing that is really important and notable is that two-thirds of Americans say what's more concerning is to have a president who does not tell the truth than to have one who's too old to do the job - 68% said that not telling the truth was a bigger problem. So even though we certainly saw in the survey that a majority of people think Biden doesn't have the mental fitness to be president, a majority say he does have the character to be president when a majority say that Trump does not.
MARTÍNEZ: All right, so if it winds up not being President Biden, what do the polls say about the other potential Democratic replacements?
MONTANARO: Yeah, this is really interesting because everyone does about the same as Biden. You know, California Governor Gavin Newsom did exactly the same as Biden, 50-48, when we tested him. Vice President Harris was at 50-49 over Trump, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was tied. Newsome did slightly better with independents than Harris and Whitmer. And, you know, he's been on Fox News quite a bit, so there might be some exposure there to those voters. Of course, any of those candidates certainly have more of a capability of prosecuting the case against former President Trump coherently and defending themselves. And that's something that Biden has really struggled with and a big reason why so many Democrats, you know, who want him to step aside say that he should.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR political correspondent Domenico Montanaro. Thanks a lot.
MONTANARO: You're welcome.
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MARTÍNEZ: Palestinian civilians who fled parts of Gaza City in the past two weeks are returning to find very little left of their homes.
PFEIFFER: They had evacuated after the Israeli military renewed its operations in what is the largest city in Gaza. At the same time, the U.S. is lifting a pause it had put on weapon shipments a month ago.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR's Hadeel Al-Shalchi joins us now from Tel Aviv. The Israeli military announced it had withdrawn from districts in Gaza City, so what happened?
HADEEL AL-SHALCHI, BYLINE: So while intense urban combat, including Israeli airstrikes, continues in other parts of Gaza City, the Israeli military announced yesterday that it had left the district of Shijaiyah, where it launched an offensive which lasted two weeks. The Shijaiyah civil defense said that more than 60 Palestinians were killed, among the many women. And the Israeli military said it had killed dozens of militants in their operation and destroyed a number of tunnels. Now, Gaza City has seen numerous Israeli ground invasions since the beginning of the war in October, and about 300,000 Palestinians remained in the north during the last operation. This has been a pattern, though, in the war, where the Israeli military declares victory over Hamas and withdraws from towns just for it to reenter, saying that Hamas has regrouped.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. And then what are those Palestinians who did evacuate, what are they seeing when they come back?
AL-SHALCHI: Utter devastation. The Shijaiyah civil defense said that the neighborhood is uninhabitable. They said almost 120,000 Palestinians are now homeless, and that the Subha (ph) medical clinic was destroyed. It used to provide services to almost 6,000 Palestinians. Civil defense also reports that Palestinian rescue teams are finding bodies that seem to have bled out, strewn across rows, that whole neighborhoods have turned into rubble and dust. And the civil defense says that they're having a hard time pulling out bodies that are stuck under the rubble of buildings, and some of them are entire families.
MARTÍNEZ: And what's happening in other parts of Gaza City?
AL-SHALCHI: So two days ago, the Israeli military told Palestinians in Gaza City that they could use routes it had provided if they chose to leave the area. The head of the Gaza civil defense said they aren't able to access certain areas because of snipers on rooftops. The thing is, this time, we didn't see that large exodus of Palestinians evacuating Gaza City as we have in previous attacks. We spoke to Fatima Dama (ph). She is a freelance journalist in north Gaza near the Jabalia District. And she said that while her family told her to leave, she said, what's the point?
FATIMA DAMA: (Speaking Arabic).
AL-SHALCHI: Dama says, "since nowhere is safe, I'd rather die at home. At least I am familiar with my neighborhood."
MARTÍNEZ: Wow. And now U.S. officials say that they're going to be sending a large number of weapons withheld from Israel, but not all of them, right?
AL-SHALCHI: That's right. The Biden administration announced yesterday that it's going to go ahead and send a shipment of 500-pound bombs to Israel that it had paused because the U.S. was concerned about Israeli military operations in Rafah in the south of Gaza. Now, if you were following, in early May, the U.S. warned Israel against a full incursion in Rafah because of the risk to civilians. About 1 million Palestinians were sheltering there. The shipment at the time included 800 2,000-pound bombs, which are still going to be withheld.
MARTÍNEZ: That's NPR's Hadeel Al-Shalchi. Thank you very much.
AL-SHALCHI: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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