Trump v Biden latest: Biden polling 'behind four alternative Democrat candidates'; Vance to make debut speech (2024)

Democrats urging the party's national committee to delay nominating Joe Biden have scrapped their request.

A letter had been drafted saying it would be a "terrible idea" to stifle debate about the party's nominee with an early virtual roll call vote.

But the letter will no longer be sent, a spokesperson for California representative Jared Huffman told our partner network NBC News.

This morning, a separate letter was sent to party members saying the Democrats would nominate Mr Biden in an early August vote, not in the coming days.

Russia's foreign minister has welcomed Donald Trump's choice of running mate, JD Vance.

Sergei Lavrov said Kyiv's allies "need to stop pumping Ukraine full of weapons and then the war will end".

Mr Vance fiercely opposes aid to Ukraine and hasexpressed doubt that the war is a major national security concern for the US.

"I don't really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other," Mr Vance said in an interview in 2022.

Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and has demanded it surrender huge swatches of territory and drop its aspirations to join NATO in return for a ceasefire.

Former president and deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia Dmitry Medvedev has said Russia will go on to crush the rest of Ukraine even if it accepts a truce on these terms.

Vice President Kamala Harris and JD Vance will debate each other in the coming weeks, a campaign official has told Reuters.

Yesterday we learned that Ms Harris had asked for a debate via voicemail after Mr Vance was nominated as Donald Trump's running mate.

Now the official says the pair will meet at a CBS-hosted event on 23 July, 12 August or 13 August.

By Ian King, business presenter

Much is known about JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, not least his past criticism of the Republican presidential candidate, his tough working class upbringing and his time in the US Marine Corps.

What the business world is more interested in, though, is the Ohio senator's previous career in venture capital and his views on commerce - and what they might mean in the event of Trump returning to the White House.

In particular, Mr Vance has been strongly supportive of cryptocurrency, raising hopes in the sector that a second Trump administration could be positive for the asset class.

So, too, is Trump who, in May, became the first major presidential candidate to accept donations in crypto-assets. He has already accumulated almost $3m worth of such assets - $1.8m in Bitcoin and $900,000 in Ethereum.

Mr Trump, a former sceptic about crypto, has himself spoken in the last week about his ambitions to support the US crypto industry.

He told Bloomberg Businessweek: "It's not going away. It's amazing.

"If we don't do it, China is going to pick it up and China's going to have it - or somebody else, but most likely China. China's very much into it."

Read on here...

House Democrat Adam Schiff has called on Joe Biden to drop out of the race, meaning 21 politicians in his own party have told the president to withdraw.

Mr Schiff, who is running for Senate this time around, said he had "serious concerns" over whether Mr Biden could beat Donald Trump.

As we reported earlier, polling suggests four candidates would perform at least five points better than Mr Biden in seven key swing states.

In a statement to the LA Times, Mr Schiff said Mr Biden had "made our country better" but "a second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy".

"There is only one singular goal: defeating Donald Trump. The stakes are just too high," he said.

The choice to withdraw remained Mr Biden's, said Mr Schiff, but he believed the president should "pass the torch".

A reporter who covered Joe Biden's early career has called on the president to withdraw.

Describing Mr Biden's appearances on TV as "painful", Curtis Wilkie said the wisdom once evident in the 81-year-old was no longer there.

Himself 84, Mr Wilkie wrote in Mississippi Today that he wished Mr Biden had been a transitional president ready to hand the torch to a younger generation after one term.

"I share with Biden the frailties of old age that grip us both and have begun to diminish our physical and cognitive powers," said Mr Wilki, who has not spoken to Mr Biden in 17 years.

"Instead of leaving a strong personal legacy, Biden may be remembered in the history of this turbulent period as a selfish man, weakened by age, who clung to his office too long."

The rest of his op-ed was full of praise for a man who he said had energy, wit, ambition and admirable empathy throughout his career.

In particular, he noted the former Deleware senator's "poignant public appearance" after his family was involved in a deadly collision.

"He emerged from the tragedy of the deaths of his wife and daughter by accepting the challenge of serving in the Senate, and he bowed out of the presidential races of 1988, 2008 and 2016 gracefully and kept his honor intact for 2020. That wisdom is no longer evident."

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are polling behind four alternative presidential candidates, according to a survey of 15,000 voters in seven battleground states.

Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, Maryland governor Wes Moore, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, and Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer all outpaced Mr Biden by roughly five points, BlueLabs Analytics found.

The vice president beat him by less than three points.

"Voters are looking for a fresh face. Those more closely tied to the currentadministration perform relatively worse than other tested candidates," the polling memo read, first reported by Politico.

The poll found some of the gains came from Donald Trump voters, undecideds and third-party voters.

Three per cent of potential Trump voters would switch to voting Democrat if Mr Biden was not leading the ticket.

Of those who support an alternative Democrat to Mr Biden, 60% said the candidate's ability to beat Donald Trump was among the top two traits they were looking for.

Police officers shot and killed a man wielding two knives near theRepublican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisonsin, yesterday.

Mayor Cavalier Johnson has said the bicycle officers saved the life of an unarmed man from death or serious injury.

They saw the assailant lunge at the other man after commanding him to drop the knives, said Mr Johnson.

He added he was "saddened" by the death.

Nearly two-thirds of Democrat voters say Joe Biden should withdraw from the presidential race and make way for a new candidate, according to a new AP poll.

Approximately six in 10 Americans want Donald Trump to pull out too, the same survey by the Center for Public Affairs Research found.

The poll was conducted mostly before Saturday's assassination attempt on Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, though interviews suggested his prospects had not improved as a result.

"I just feel like these two individuals are a sad choice," said Alexi Mitchell, 35, a civil servant who lives in Virginia. She identifies as a Democratic-leaning independent.

"He's [Biden] put us in a bad position where Trump might win."

Americans were much more likely to think Mr Trump is capable of winning than Mr Biden – 42% to 18%, the poll found.

Approximately three in 10 Democrats were extremely or very confident that Mr Biden has the mental capability to serve effectively as president.

"I do have genuine concerns about his ability to hold the office," said one Democrat, Andrew Holcomb, 27, of Denver.

"I think he's frankly just too old for the job."

Janie Stapleton, a 50-year-old lifelong Democrat from Walls, Mississippi, held the opposite view, saying Mr Biden is the "best candidate" for president.

Most Democrats - around six in 10 - said vice president Kamala Harris would make a good president, while 22% think not.

The poll showed that 43% of adults have a favorable opinion of her, while 48% have an unfavorable opinion.

On the other side of the aisle, Democrats will look to hold an early virtual vote to make Joe Biden their party's nominee in the first week of August.

This is despite a number of House Democrats raising "serious concerns" about the speed of the plan as they cast doubt on Mr Biden's candidacy.

The Democratic National Convention's rules committee will meet on Friday to discuss its plans, according to a letter obtained by the Associated Press.

"We will not be implementing a rushed virtual voting process, though we will begin our important consideration of how a virtual voting process would work," it read.

In a separate letter seen by the AP yet to be sent to the Democratic National Committee, some Democrats said it would be a "terrible idea" to stifle debate about the party's nominee with the early roll call vote.

"It could deeply undermine the morale and unity of Democrats," said the letter.

The party announced in May that it would hold an early roll call to ensure Mr Biden would qualify for the ballot in Ohio, which originally had a 7 August deadline, but the state has since changed its rules.

The Biden campaign insists that the party must operate under Ohio's initial rules to ensure Republican lawmakers cannot mount legal challenges to keep the president off the ballot.