President Joe Biden looked to recapture his mojo and reassured donors at a private Saturday fundraiser in New Jersey hosted by Gov. Phil Murphy that he is fully up to the challenge of beating Donald Trump.
“I didn’t have a great night, but I’m going to be fighting harder,” Biden told about 50 people who gathered in a tent at the back patio of Murphy’s Middletown house, overlooking the Navesink River.
“Donald Trump is a genuine threat to the nation,” Biden emphasized, saying that his predecessor would undermine democracy if returned to the White House and his economic ideas would worsen inflation.
The 81-year-old’s troubling performance at the first presidential debate Thursday rattled many Democrats, who see Trump as a continuing danger after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack. Biden’s meandering answers and struggles to respond to Trump prompted The New York Times editorial board to declare Friday that he should exit the race and that staying in would be a “reckless gamble.”
Murphysaid Friday night he had no such worries, acknowledging his longtime friend and fellow Democrat had “a bad night” but that accounts of the debate “buried the lede of how awful Trump is.”
According to pool reports, Murphy introduced Biden at the Saturday fundraiser as “America’s comeback kid,” noting that with their friendship, “this is personal for us.”
“You’re on fire and we are all with you 1,000%,” the governor said to Biden.
Biden said voters had a different view of the debate than the pundits.
“Research during the debate shows us converting more undecided voters than Trump did, in large part because of his conduct on Jan. 6,” he said. “People remember the bad things during his presidency”
New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy told the crowd the fundraiser took in $3.7 million.
“People wanted to come on Friday morning,” she said.
Earlier in the day Biden and his wife, Jill, attended a campaign event in East Hampton, New York, the Long Island beach town where the real estate firm Zillow prices the median home at $1.9 million. Based on public records, the event that was closed to the news media was at the home of Avram Glazer, an owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers football team.
The couple then went to a second event in East Hampton at the home of investor Barry Rosenstein, whose wife, Lizanne, said the president was “a role model for what it is to get knocked down over and over and over again and get up.”
“We can waste time comparing debate nights,” she continued. “But you know what? It’s more meaningful to compare presidencies.”
Addressing the gathering, Biden tore into Trump over his presidential record including his treatment of veterans and pointed to Trump’s own poor performance on Thursday night.
Biden contended that the polling he’s seen shows that Democrats moved up after the debate, saying of Trump: “The big takeaway was his lies.”
In the aftermath of that debate, Biden flashed more vigor in speeches in North Carolina and New York on Friday, saying he believes with “all my heart and soul” that he can do the job of the presidency.
The Biden campaign said it has raised more than $27 million on Thursday and Friday, including $3 million at a New York City fundraiser focused on the LGBTQ+ community.
First Lady Jill Biden, who was born in Hammonton, told supporters Friday that her husband said to her after the debate: “You know, Jill, I don’t know what happened. I didn’t feel that great.” She then said she responded to him: “Look, Joe, we are not going to let 90 minutes define the four years that you’ve been president.”
The president still needs to allay the fears stirred by the debate as it seeped into the public conscience with clips and memes spreading on the internet and public pressure for him to bow out of the race.
Democratic donors across New York, Southern California and Silicon Valley privately expressed deep concerns about the viability of Biden’s campaign in the wake of his debate performance.
In a series of text message chains and private conversations, they discussed the short list of possible replacements, a group that included Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Vice President Kamala Harris.
But on Friday, there was no formal push to pressure Biden to step aside and some suspected there never would be given the logistical challenges associated with replacing the presumptive nominee just four months before Election Day.
Some donors noted they were going to pause their personal giving. They said receipts from Biden’s weekend fundraiser would almost certainly be strong because the tickets were sold and paid for before the debate.
Murphy was once considered a possible Democratic candidate for president should Biden have not run for a second term. The governor — who was U.S. ambassador to Germany under then-President Barack Obama — quick to endorse Biden after he announced his re-election bid.
Murphy, who has 1 1/2 years left on his second and final term as governor, has been considered a possible pick for a job in Biden’s cabinet should the president win this fall.
This marks the second time in two years that Biden will attend a fundraiser at Murphy’s home. He raised more than $1 million for the Democratic National Committee during an event there in 2022. Jon Bon Jovi, the New Jersey rock star who has long been Murphy’s neighbor, was also there.
Biden’s fundraiser Saturday comes less than two months after Trump held a campaign rally on the beach in Wildwood.
NJ Advance Media staff writer Brent Johnson contributed to this report.
