Biden camp, still in damage control mode, is out with new ad acknowledging balk

President Joe Biden’s post-debate damage control continued into Monday morning, when team Biden-Harris released a new campaign ad and announced they’d held more than 1,500 events in the days following Thursday’s disastrous on-stage performance.

According to the campaign, they launched a “Weekend of Action” in response to Biden’s poor showing in Atlanta, holding the “most successful organizing weekend of the campaign” while sending surrogates to more than half-a-dozen battleground states to shore up the holes now showing in Biden’s electoral chances.

“Starting with President Biden giving a fiery rally to inspire over 2,000 voters in North Carolina on Friday, the weekend featured door knocking, phone banks, postcard parties, picnics, tabling at farmers markets, line dancing, bocce ball tournaments, and game nights,” the campaign said.

Biden’s team, according to his campaign, held events in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Florida, enlisting the aid of DNC Chair Jaime Harrison, U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, Governors Wes Moore and Tim Walz, Former U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, U.S. Reps. Jim Clyburn, Maxwell Frost, and Gabe Amo, and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.

His staff used footage of Biden’s stop in North Carolina to quickly produce a campaign ad, in which the incumbent president aims to make up for his debate performance by acknowledging that it didn’t go well.

The 60-second ad, titled “I Know,” features footage from the debate and starts by pointing to the former president’s many spoken falsehoods.

“Did you see Trump last night? I mean this sincerely – the most lies told in a single debate. He lied about the great economy he created. He lied about the pandemic he botched. And then, his biggest lie: He lied about how he had nothing to do with the insurrection on January 6. We all saw it with our own eyes,” Biden says. ”We saw police being attacked, the Capitol being ransacked. He did not a single thing to stop it. Nothing.”

“Folks, I know I’m not a young man. But I know how to do this job. I know right from wrong. I know how to tell the truth. And I know, like millions of Americans know, when you get knocked down, you get back up,” the president says.

According to his campaign, the 46th President has raised more than $33 million since Thursday night’s debate, “of which $26 million is from grassroots donations. Nearly half of those grassroots donations were from first-time donors to the campaign this cycle.”

A CBS News/YouGov poll released on Sunday shows, following the Biden’s lackluster showing, about 72% of voters think its time for the 81-year-old statesman to step aside, and the same number think that he isn’t fit to serve a second term.

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