In the Biden war room before the press conference

How bad are things in Bidenworld – a circular firing squad that my partner John Heilemann recently noticed makes the finale of Reservoir Dogs What would a Merchant Ivory film look like? I learned from a reliable source that earlier this week, before the Biden Camp agreed to meet with NBC’s Lester Holt The next Monday night, they considered having the President give a prime-time speech in the Oval Office during the Republican National Convention to make a scripted, direct (and, of course, desperate) appeal to a larger audience, because all The networks would be obliged to wear it. “He will not leave this office until there are no more tools he can use,” the source said. (White House spokesman Andrew Bates denied that they were considering an option normally reserved for moments of national emergency.)

One such tool for reclaiming the media narrative was, of course, the press conference Biden held on Thursday evening at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. He went to this press conference alone – his first since last November – and, despite coughing intermittently, began with a strong teleprompter delivery. And when asked about China, he gave a solid, at times authoritative answer. But he also gave his skeptics new ammunition when he answered the first question with a reference to, among other things, Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump card”, a faux pas that predictably provoked an almost immediate response from Trump on Truth Social: “Great job, Joe!”