Natalie Sherman
New York business reporter

A Democratic donor has gone public with doubts about the US president, raising concerns about what it might do to the finances of Biden's campaign.

Mark Pincus, founder of the video games firm Zynga, told the Financial Times he did not believe President Biden “will ever get around this age competency issue at this point”.

“I think the best chance for the Democratic party will be an open convention where someone else can step in,” he said, according to the publication, external.

Biden once held a clear fundraising advantage over Trump, but the gap between the two candidates has closed.

The Trump campaign raised more than $330m in the April-June quarter, it announced earlier this month.

That was ahead of the $264m claimed by Biden during the same period.

Image source, Youtube

Let's take a moment to revisit a press conference we talked about earlier, where House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said Democrats are still talking to one another about Biden's re-election campaign.

"Those conversations have been candid, comprehensive and clear-eyed," he said. "They continue until that process has concluded."

Jeffries refused to address what "outside stakeholders" have to say about those talks, and went on to say he's going to speak to the leadership team before the party figures out its "next step".

Image source, Getty Images

Biden's Canadian counterpart is standing by him.

Speaking with reporters at the Nato summit today, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the world was lucky to have Joe Biden's insight and wisdom and "steadfastness in challenging times".

He said it was a "privilege and pleasure to work with him on big issues" and he looked forward to continuing to do so.

He is one of several world leaders and US allies to continue to pledge their support for Biden in recent weeks.

The newly-elected British PM said his chats with Joe Biden at the Nato summit had shown the US president's "incredible leadership".

Sir Keir Starmer said Biden was "on really good form" when the pair met.

When a reporter asked Starmer if Biden was senile, he answered "no" and continued to praise the US president.

"We covered a lot of ground – strategic ground, international stuff, not just Ukraine."

Starmer said the visit to Washington DC had provided a chance to "be clear about the special relationship and about our long-standing commitment to Nato".

Focus on Biden's frailty undermining message of unitypublished at 18:31 British Summer Time 11 July

18:31 BST 11 July

Tom Bateman
Reporting from the Nato summit

What Joe Biden has presided over here at the Nato summit is a message of unity. That's not an easy thing actually, this is quite a disparate military alliance. So that in itself is an achievement.

But the fundamental problem is, every time he steps on a stage, every time he holds a press conference as he's going to do later today, everyone is watching, including frankly many of the delegates here.

The focus has gone beyond whether he is going to make it to the end of the speech without a fluff, or forgetting a line, but to whether he is going to get to the end of a sentence.

The American media has been, for two weeks straight now, running this story almost as the daily lead about the divisions within his party and the questions over his age.

The longer that goes on the more it undermines all those other messages of unity, particularly here at the Nato summit.

So, you have what should be for the White House a story about the US at the core of Nato - a projection of America's power - instead becoming an issue about the focus on the frailty of its leader.

Image source, Reuters

We just had a couple of quick press conferences in the past few minutes, so let's take a look at what happened.

We heard from Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic leader in the House of Representatives.

Jeffries said his members were having "candid" and "clear-eyed" conversations with each other about Biden's campaign. And until conversations have wrapped up, he wouldn't comment on what any "outside stakeholders" had to say about President Biden.

Then we saw Biden at a Nato meeting with Ukraine's leader Volodymyr Zelensky.

Biden briefly spoke about aid to Ukraine and Russian aggression. He did not respond to a question a reporter shouted about his decision to stay in the race.

Tom Bateman
Reporting from the Nato summit

I’ve just grabbed a couple of answers from the White House spokesman John Kirby as he walked through the press room at the Nato summit.

I asked if there was any response to Senator Peter Welch's call for the president to step aside as the nominee:

Admiral Kirby: "The President has made his position clear he's running for re-election."

I then asked for a reaction to George Clooney's opinion column on Biden in the New York Times.

Admiral Kirby: "Again, the President's been clear he's going to run for re-election. And that's what he's made I think very, very plainly, plainly obvious."

When asked if there was now a critical mass among Democrats, with Nancy Pelosi's comments on Tuesday along with the first Senator speaking out, he replied:

Natalie Sherman
New York business reporter

Democratic donor Morris Pearl heads up the advocacy group Patriotic Millionaires, which has advocated for issues such as higher taxes on the wealthy.

He told the BBC’s World Business Report that his group did not have an official position on whether Biden should step aside.

But he said his personal support for the Democratic Party in November was not in doubt, whether Biden was the candidate or not.

“It’s not that I’m personally loyal to one particular individual person – it’s that I’m loyal to my side,” he said.

“I’m going to vote for the Democratic ticket, I’m sure,” he added. “I certainly don’t want Mr Trump being president.”

That enough voters feel like Pearl is the gamble that many Democrats were content to make until the debate. But the ongoing revolt among some Democratic Party members has raised fresh doubts about that strategy.

Listen to more here.

Image source, Getty Images

Today, Biden is meeting with Nato leaders at the 2024 summit in Washington DC to work on a number of issues, including the war in Ukraine.

He just met with Nato's Indo-Pacific partners to discuss investments in defence, support to Ukraine, and strong leadership in the Indo-Pacific, according to a White House readout.

Later this afternoon, Nato's Ukraine council is holding a meeting.

Biden will have a packed day before his highly-anticipated press conference at 18:30 EDT (23:30 BST).

You can stay across the latest Nato updates at our live coverage here.

Image source, Getty Images

More now on the new poll we just mentioned.

The Biden campaign is already capitalising on the Ipsos data, which shows Trump and Biden neck-and-neck.

In a campaign memo obtained by the BBC's US partner CBS News, Biden aides claim the poll shows increased anxiety following the debate is not translating into a "drastic shift in vote share".

The campaign concludes in the memo that there is "no indication" any candidate other than Biden can beat Trump.

The memo adds that the debate was a "setback" for Biden but that he and his campaign have weathered setbacks before.

A new poll , externalconducted by Ipsos, ABC News and the Washington Post has found that Biden and Trump are nearly tied if the election were held today, with Biden at 46% and Trump at 47%.

Among registered voters in the poll, it is a complete tie, 46-46%.

That’s roughly the same results as polls that were taken before Biden’s poor debate performance last month.

But the same survey also yielded a negative result for the 81-year-old, finding that two-thirds of Americans believe Biden should step aside as his party’s presumptive nominee because of his debate night.

The poll took in a random national sample of 2,431 adults, which were 32% Democrats, 29% Republicans and 27% independents.

Joe Biden's highly-anticipated news conference scheduled for later this evening will be a rare occurrence.

In fact, it's Biden's first formal solo press conference of the year, which is already more than halfway over.

Compared to other recent US presidents, including Barack Obama and George W Bush, Biden has given the fewest number of news conferences per year - 11 on average.

Biden's opponent, Donald Trump, gave twice as many news conferences, on average.

Image source, .

Pressure on Joe Biden to step aside from the 2024 presidential election started almost immediately today.

Democratic Party lawmaker Greg Landsman of Ohio told CNN this morning that he was having doubts about Biden as a candidate.

His comments come after actor and Democratic fundraiser George Clooney penned an op-ed in the New York Times yesterday asking Biden to step down.

"I'm getting closer and closer to appreciating that as much as I respect Joe Biden and what he's done... what Clooney said yesterday was really powerful," Landsman told CNN.

"It's becoming increasingly likely that... this may be just too high of a hill for [Biden] to climb."

This week, we heard the first Democratic senator - Peter Welch - call on Biden to step aside.

But not all are joining him.

Speaking on MSNBC this morning, Democratic Senator Chris Coons, a co-chair of the Biden campaign, says Biden has been making up for his poor debate performance in the past two weeks, calling this week in particular "remarkable".

Biden, he says, had a “bad night” during the debate, but is doing “exactly what he needs to do to move on from our concerns about that debate”.

He also took a dig at actor George Clooney, who penned a damning op-ed yesterday in the New York Times calling on Biden to step aside.

"Now, I question whether George Clooney has really spent a lot of time with President Biden in person. I’m more of a Matt Damon guy than a George Clooney guy,” Coons says.

Brandon Livesay
US reporter

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of US politics, where once again the focus is on US President Joe Biden and his re-election campaign.

Several high-profile Democrats have urged Biden to quit in the wake of his poor debate performance against Donald Trump last month.

As well as a growing number of politicians, Hollywood stars George Clooney and Michael Douglas have voiced their own criticisms.

A bruising day on Wednesday sank any hopes that the president might have had of steadying his campaign this week, as our correspondent Anthony Zurcher put it.

Biden has insisted he will fight on – and will be in the spotlight later for an unscripted news conference at 18:30 EDT (23:30 BST) at the end of a Nato summit in Washington.

Critics have said the 81-year-old's performances in front of a teleprompter don't paint the same picture as when he speaks off the cuff, like in the debate. So this news conference will be watched closely.

Stick with us, it's another big day of news in the US.