Biden campaign takes drop-out denial to Morning Joe: ‘He’s absolutely in this race’

Joe Biden’s re-election campaign chair is hoping to stamp out reports that the president is ending his campaign after a brutal week marked by several leaks from high-profile Democratic officials suggesting that his time on the trail is coming to an end.

Jen O’Malley Dillon appeared on MSNBC’s influential Morning Joe broadcast on Friday morning to declare that Biden is “absolutely” staying in the race against Donald Trump, and argued that there remains a “clear path forward” for victory despite a series of polls showing none.

“We are built for the close election that we’re in, and we see the path forward,” she said.

“I’m not here to say that this hasn’t been a tough several weeks for the campaign,” she added. “There’s no doubt that it has been, and we’ve definitely seen some slippage in support, but it has been a small movement.”

That “slippage” has included another Democratic senator asking Biden to step aside, and polling that shows Trump leading by increasing margins in seven swing states, with Biden dropping by two points since earlier this month.

Nearly two-thirds of Democratic voters also want Biden to withdraw, according to poll results from the Associated Press-NORC.

Biden, who was diagnosed with COVID-19 and is isolating in Delaware this week, still has “multiple pathways to victory,” according to Dillon.

The campaign is “not sitting with our heads in the sand” but working to get out a message that there remains strong grassroots support when he is on the campaign trail, she said.

“We know the president has to prove to the American people exactly what he believes,” Dillon said. “That he is in this to win it … and he’s the only person who has done it before.”

Dillon did not directly answer when she was asked