Both David and I have written about the stream of media effluvium flowing from anonymous sources that claim Joe Biden will withdraw from the race. That still continues this morning, to which I'll return in a moment. Since yesterday afternoon, however, the White House and the Biden campaign have shifted to offense in rebutting this claims on the record, as we also documented in nearly real time yesterday as developments emerged.

That counter-campaign continued today on Morning Joe, the MSNBC show whose hosts called for Biden to exit the race yesterday and accused his aides of financial motives for keeping him in place. Willie Geist asked Biden campaign chair to address the rumors, which Jen O'Malley Dillon rejected entirely:

"We've believed from the beginning that this is a state-by-state race... It is a race about issues. And when we are able to fight on the issues, we are able to win."

— Biden campaign chair @jomalleydillon responds to concerns Biden could cost Democrats the House and Senate pic.twitter.com/1ZMGxfWtsw

— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) July 19, 2024

President Joe Biden’s campaign chair is acknowledging that he has “seen some slippage in support” but that he is “absolutely” still in the race and can still beat former President Donald Trump.

Biden reelection campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon told MSNBC on Friday that the growing calls for Biden to leave the race have made for difficult moments. But she insisted Biden isn’t dropping out and “we have multiple pathways to victory.”

Dillon is both right and wrong about the polls. Geist notes that most of the battleground results we've seen from this week still show Biden within or close to the margin of error, meaning that Biden remains competitive. Dillon agrees and argues that their campaign organization can close those gaps with their GOTV efforts, and that's certainly possible. 

The "multiple pathways" argument is a different matter. Biden doesn't have multiple pathways; he has to nearly run the table with the states he won in 2020, and he's behind in all of those battleground states now. The race may be close in each of these states individually, but taken as a whole it's starting to look like a preference cascade. National polling seems to be moving in that direction too, although again not by a dramatic amount at this point. 

Nevertheless, the anonymice pressure campaign continues this morning. This time NBC News gets in the act by claiming that the Biden family has begun planning a withdrawal:

Members of President Joe Biden’s family have discussed what an exit from his campaign might look like, according to two people familiar with the discussions. 

The overall tone of the conversations has been that any exit plan — should Biden decide to take that step, as some of his closest allies increasingly believe he will — should put the party in the best position to beat former President Donald Trump while also being worthy of the more than five decades he has served the country in elected office, these people said. 

Biden’s family members have specifically discussed how he would want to end his re-election bid on his own timing and with a carefully calculated plan in place. Considerations about the impact of the campaign on his health, his family and the stability of the country are among those at the forefront of the discussions, the people familiar with the discussions said.

Emphasis mine. Who are these two people and how are they familiar with Biden family discussions? Let's recall MJ Lee's report last night for CNN (in David's post this morning) that "Senior-most West Wing advisers to the president say they have had no discussions amongst themselves – or with President Biden – about the president dropping out of the race." So none of the president's inner circle knows of these discussions, and one has to presume that Hunter and Jill aren't talking to NBC News on the sly. So who are these "people familiar with the discussions"?

Nor is that the only reason to take this with extreme skepticism. If Biden is considering a withdrawal, he wouldn't have sent Dillon to Morning Joe to tell everyone that it's still game on. If Biden had begun planning his exit, other Democrats in Congress would not still be making demands for him to leave the race. And if Biden wanted to leave for the good of his party, Team Biden wouldn't have nuked Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi as the people responsible for electing Trump in 2016 by pressuring Biden to stay out of the race. 

And NBC sent out this report as Dillon insisted Biden was staying in the race -- on an NBC News channel!

Right now, the media is either being played by the Democrat establishment or are willing participants in a plot to pressure the elected nominee out of a presidential race. They are doing so despite on-the-record denials by practically everyone actually around Joe Biden, and 50 years of Biden's power-seeking efforts and narcissism. 

That doesn't mean Biden will never change his mind, but he clearly hasn't at this point. Perhaps the media should get its head out from inside the rectum of the Democrat establishment for a while.