Election 2024 live: Biden insists he won’t drop out of race in letter to democrats

President Joe Biden has followed up on his letter to congressional Democrats by calling into MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

He says he has been traveling “to make sure my instinct was right about the party still wanted me to be the nominee” and he believes that the party does.

“I’m confident they do,” Biden says.

“I am not going anywhere.”

President Joe Biden is attempting to head off discussions of whether he should stand aside amid questions over his age and capacity with a defiant letter to Congressional Democrats in which he says exiting the race would be an affront to democracy.

Biden’s missive, which he released publicly on his X (formerly Twitter) account on Monday ahead of Congress’ return to Washington, opens with a declaration that he is “firmly committed” to remaining a candidate in this year’s presidential election and to “running this race to the end, and to beating Donald Trump.”

Andrew Feinberg reports from the White House.

House Oversight Committee chair James Comer has demanded Joe Biden’s doctor sits for an interview about his medical assessments and potential business dealings with the Biden family, amid the escalating controversy around the president’s mental and physical wellbeing.

In a letter addressed to the aforementioned Dr O’Connor on Sunday, the Republican lawmaker wrote that he is “concerned your medical assessments have been influenced by your private business endeavors with the Biden family”.

He asked Dr O’Connor to sit for a behind-closed-doors interview and hand over any communications he may have had with James Biden, the president’s brother, regarding Americore – a now bankrupt healthcare business.

Comer is giving the doctor until July 14 to contact staff to schedule the interview.

A White House spokesperson dismissed the letter as “crazy, discredited conspiracy theories” when reached for comment.

Joe Biden has written to congressional Democrats insisting that he will stay in the race to keep hold of the White House.

Lawmakers are returning to Capitol Hill from their July 4 recess amid concerns over the president’s ability to lead the party to victory in November.

Acknowledging these concerns, Biden writes: “I can respond to all this by saying clearly and unequivocally: I wouldn’t be running again if I did not absolutely believe I was the best person to beat Donald Trump in 2024.”

Kamala Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, has tested positive for Covid-19 after experiencing mild symptoms, his office announced on Sunday, a diagnosis coming just days after he joined Biden for July 4 celebrations at the White House.

Emhoff spokesperson Liza Acevedo said in a statement that the second gentleman “is fully vaccinated and three times boosted” and that he is “currently asymptomatic, continuing to work remotely, and remaining away from others at home.”

Harris herself has tested negative and remains asymptomatic.

Acevedo said the veep was tested on Saturday “out of an abundance of caution” and the result was negative.

She is next scheduled to campaign in Las Vegas for Biden’s re-election on Tuesday.

What’s Trump up to while Biden remains in a state of perma-crisis?

Flooding his social media echo chamber with favourable press clippings and polls claiming his recent felony conviction was rigged and otherwise engaging in meaningless trolling like the below.

He’s also heavily promoting his next rally in Florida tomorrow evening, which could swing the spotlight back his way.

Here’s Graig Graziosi with more on his latest taunts.

Here’s John Bowden on how the steady drip of Democratic dissent could be about to get a whole lot louder when Congress returns today, as the president’s troubled son continues to advise his old man to hang in there.

Possibly a case of 2+2=5 here but The New York Post has reported that Dr Kevin O’Connor met with Dr Kevin Cannard, a leading specialist in Parkinson’s disease from the Walter Reed Medical Centre, at the White House on January 17 this year.

The Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid found that out by examining White House visitor logs, which do not disclose the reason for a guest’s visit and it is therefore a bit of a leap to assume Dr Cannard was there to assess the commander-in-chief’s mental health, although it is not beyond the realms of possibility.

This is the Post’s impossibly tasteless current frontpage, incidentally, in case you were wondering where its allegiances lie.

It’s also worth saying again that the Biden camp has continued to deny that the president is suffering from cognitive decline or any other degenerative mental condition and has insisted that his “bad night” on the debate stage was simply the result of a cold.

Biden himself told George Stephanopoulos on Friday that he had no interest in receiving further testing, despite the likes of CNN chief medical correspondent Dr Sanjay Gupta urging him to do so.

Mike Bedigan brings us more on that.

US vice president Kamala Harris barely mentioned her own running mate on Saturday as she spoke to Black voters and talked about the 2024 race at the annual Essence Festival in New Orleans.

Harris has been seen by many Democrats as the obvious choice to pick up the mantle of the party’s 2024 nomination should Biden step aside in the coming days – a proposition the president has firmly denied will take place.

But, in Louisiana, she appeared ready to take on that role regardless as she hammered Trump and sought to lay out the stakes of the election.

She spoke for just under 30 minutes and only mentioned Biden directly one time, making no mention of the growing movement within her party for the preisident to bow out of the 2024 race.

Instead, she reserved the majority of her words for Trump, whom allies of the incumbent president argue the press has not held to the same standard – despite the seemingly endless coverage of his criminal trials, convictions and innumerable scandals.

Here’s more John Bowden.