Maryland Gov. Wes Moore will join Democratic governors who are meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House on Wednesday night amid rising concerns about the president’s reelection campaign.
The governors pushed for the White House gathering after Biden’s widely panned performance at the presidential debate in Atlanta last week.
A spokesperson for Moore’s campaign confirmed that he would be in attendance. Moore was not made available to reporters following a public meeting of the Board of Public Works at the State House on Wednesday morning.
The closed-door meeting with the president is scheduled for Wednesday evening, according to an advisory put out by the White House press office.
According to news reports, several governors held a conference call on Monday and shared concerns that Biden hadn’t spoken with them in the days following the debate, in which Biden, speaking in a raspy voice, often struggled for words against Republican nominee and former President Donald J. Trump. Fact-checkers have said Trump repeated a slew of falsehoods during his attacks on Biden.
Publicly, Moore has been a steadfast supporter of Biden. Over the weekend, he traveled to Wisconsin to promote the president, and he also has appeared on national political talk shows since the debate. In April, Biden stood alongside Moore in Baltimore after the Francis Scott Key Bridge was toppled and vowed that the federal government would pay for rebuilding the bridge.
On Tuesday, Moore brushed aside a question about whether he would enter the presidential race should Biden withdraw.
“I will not,” Moore said on CBS’ “Face The Nation.” “And Joe Biden is not going to take himself out of this race, nor should he.”
Moore is among 50 “leading voices in the Democratic party” who are on a national advisory board for the Biden-Harris reelection campaign.
Since the debate, some Democrats have fretted that Biden not only could lose to Trump in a rematch of their 2020 race, but also that the 81-year-old president may not be up to the task of governing during a second term. The New York Times reported Tuesday that several current and former officials have said that Biden’s lapses in closed-door meetings have become more common.
There have been calls for Biden to resign, initially from pundits, columnists and unidentified sources, but U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas on Tuesday became the first Democrat in Congress to publicly call for Biden to withdraw from the campaign.
For his part, Biden has sought to explain his debate showing, including fatigue from international travel.
“I decided to travel around the world a couple of times … shortly before the debate … I didn’t listen to my staff … and then I almost fell asleep on stage,” Biden told supporters at a fundraiser Tuesday night.
