Biden Tries to Soothe His Top Fund-Raisers on a Private Call

President Biden spoke directly to some of his biggest fund-raisers and donors on Monday, repeating his assertion that he was staying in the race and telling them they needed to shift the focus of the campaign away from him and onto former President Donald J. Trump.

“I have one job, to beat Donald Trump,” Mr. Biden said on a call with his campaign’s National Finance Committee, adding that he was “the best person” to do that, according to a listener who relayed the president’s remark to The New York Times. He said it was time to put Mr. Trump in the “bull’s-eye,” according to a second listener.

The president’s 19-minute remarks to donors amounted to the most formal entreaty to his financiers since his poor debate performance over a week ago that they should stay the course.

His appearance, which was announced to his fund-raisers just 24 minutes before the call was set to begin, came after he sent a defiant letter to congressional Democrats on Monday morning rejecting the idea that he should drop out and gave an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in which he invited challengers to try to stop him at the party’s convention next month.

Mr. Biden took four questions on the donor call, screened by his aides, about how he planned to proceed as a candidate. One asked for a 30-second elevator pitch to relay to voters. Another sought to understand how Mr. Biden could weather this round of media criticism. A third wanted to know how he would handle the next debate.

Mr. Biden’s remarks were described to The Times by almost a dozen people who listened to the conference call.