Jen O’Malley Dillon, the Biden-Harris campaign chair, warned her staff not to watch cable news to prevent it from damaging team morale.
More than three weeks after the debate, the calls for President Biden to withdraw from the presidential race are still growing day by day, both publicly and privately, and campaign staff are reportedly suffering from low morale. In that sense, O’Malley Dillon called a conference call with his entire staff on Friday and instructed them to ignore the news reports and listen to Biden’s most ardent supporters to face reality.
“Don’t watch cable news all the time,” O’Malley Dillon reportedly told staffers. Axios“That’s not the real world. The real world is voters who stand with us, representatives who stand with us, and because of this organization, we’re going to get through this.”
Biden supporters, Democrats admit presidential race seems ‘game over’: Report
Axios reported that Biden campaign chair Jennifer O’Malley Dillon told staff to “avoid watching cable news all the time.” (Photo of Biden by Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images | Andre Chiang for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
“Give us the poll results and we’ll be reaching out to voters directly,” O’Malley Dillon said, a source told Fox News. “The voice of voters that the president is listening to is: ‘Stay in the race, keep going, keep fighting. We need you.'”
“Those voices aren’t going to be as loud as those on TV, but we have to remember that people in our country don’t watch cable news,” she added.
Fox News Channel viewership dwarfs MSNBC, CNN in second quarter
Just hours before the call, the campaign chairman made a rare appearance on cable news, assuring viewers and hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Biden remained on the campaign trail and was “more committed than ever to defeating Donald Trump.”
“The president is in this race,” O’Malley Dillon said on the show. “You’ve heard him say that many times, and I think last night we really saw why, because Donald Trump is not offering anything new to the American people. He’s the same guy he was in 2020. He’s the same guy he was in the debates.”
The cable news channel reportedly has a lot of influence over the White House.
Many of Biden’s allies have expressed concern about whether he can defeat former President Trump in the 2024 election. (Biden photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images; Trump photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Axios previously report Biden and his staff watch MSNBC’s morning shows closely, and “Biden watches Morning Joe so frequently that most of his senior aides watch or follow the show to anticipate the questions he’ll ask them,” the report said.
The outlet also reported that people familiar with the relationship between the two men said Biden “frequently calls co-host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman and now a fierce critic of Donald Trump, to get his views on issues and sometimes to complain about media coverage.”
Biden himself appeared on “Morning Joe” earlier this month to try to solidify his support.
“The bottom line is, we’re not going anywhere. I’m not going anywhere,” Biden told the moderators, a vocal supporter who began to waver after the debate.
“I wouldn’t be running if I wasn’t convinced I was the best candidate to beat Donald Trump in 2024,” Biden added. “We had a democratic nominating process in which voters spoke clearly, and I won 14 million of those votes.”
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Fox News Digital reached out to the Biden campaign but did not immediately receive a response.
