Biden initially used the final Nato summit press conference as something of a stump speech, brandishing his national security record in supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression and saying that the November vote was “much more than a political question … It’s a national security issue.”

He then turned to his record on the economy, border security and his efforts to broker a peace in the Israel-Hamas war to bolster his case for his campaign in November.

Biden spoke for 58 minutes, including 50 minutes of unscripted question-and-answer. He appeared most comfortable and cogent as he discussed thorny foreign policy questions.

“Don’t make the same mistake America made after [Osama] Bin Laden,” he said he told Netanyahu, as he sought to ward off a potential occupation of the Gaza Strip. “There’s no need to occupy anywhere. Go after the people who did the job.”

He also indicated that European countries were prepared to cut their investments in China if Xi continued to “[supply] Russia, with information and capacity, along with working with North Korea and others, to help Russia in armament”.

But at times he got lost in the weeds. Asked about reports that he had asked his schedule to be moved up, he said: “I’m not talking about, and if you’ve looked at my schedule since I, since I made that stupid mistake in the campaign, in the debate. I mean, my schedule has been full bore.”

“Where’s Trump been?” he continued. “Riding around on his golf cart? Filling out his scorecard before he hits the ball?”

Here is a summary of what happened during and after Biden’s press conference earlier today:

• During a signing ceremony alongside Zelenskiy on the final day of the summit, Joe Biden accidentally introduced Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy as “President Putin” in a gaffe that will fuel further concerns about his mental acuity that have threatened to scuttle his presidential campaign. Realising his mistake, Biden caught himself and said: “President Putin! We’re going to beat President Putin. President Zelenskiy. I’m so focused on beating Putin. We’ve got to worry about it. Anyway, Mr. President.

• Later, while taking questions from reporters, Biden mistakenly called Kamala Harris ‘Vice-President Trump’. Asked if he has concerns about vice-president Harris’s ability to beat Donald Trump if she were at the top of the ticket, Biden said he, “wouldn’t have picked vice-president Trump to be vice-president if I didn’t think she was not qualified to be president. From the very beginning, I made no bones about that. She is qualified to be president. That’s why I picked her.”

• He was also asked whether he would step down if staff showed him data that indicated Harris would be more likely to beat Trump in the election. He said he would not step down unless staff showed him data that said there was no way he could win.

• Biden was asked several questions about whether he is fit to run for president. In response to one, he said he was, “the most qualified person to run for president”. He said he beat Donald Trump once, “and I will beat him again”. Biden said there’s a “long way to go” with his campaign, and that he is “just going to keep moving” because he has “more work to do”. “We’ve got more work to finish,” he says.

• Biden called the debate two weeks ago “a mistake” and said his schedule since then had been “full bore”, and that his wife, Jill Biden, had been critical of this.

• Asked how he can assure the American people that he won’t have “more bad nights” like on the debate stage last month, Biden said the best way to assure voters was to ask if he was “getting the job done”. He said, “Can you name me somebody who’s got more major pieces of legislation passed in three-and-a-half years?”

• Biden was asked if he wished he had done anything differently over the course of the Israel-Gaza war so far. Biden said he immediately went to Israel and was in immediate contact with the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, and the Jordanian leader, to try to get a consensus on how to get more aid and food and medicine into the Gaza Strip. “We pushed it really hard,” Biden says, but Israel was “occasionally less than cooperative”. He points to the Israeli war cabinet as being one of the most conservative war cabinets in the history of Israel. He said he put together a process for a two-state solution, because “the question has been from the beginning – what’s the day after in Gaza?”

• Biden was asked what has changed since his candidacy in 2020, when he referred to himself as being a bridge candidate for a younger, fresher generation of Democratic leaders. Biden said what has changed is the “gravity of the situation” that he inherited in terms of the economy and US foreign policy. He says that most presidential historians have given him credit for having accomplished more than most any president since Johnson, “and maybe before that”, to get major pieces of legislation passed.

• Biden said he is “determined” to keep running in November. “I’m determined on running, but I think it’s important that I allay fears. I say let them see me out there.”

• As soon as the press conference wrapped, Representative Jim Himes, a Democrat of Connecticut and a member of the House intelligence committee, joined the small but growing group of congressional Democrats asking Biden to step down.

• Representative Scott Peters of California then called on Biden to withdraw his campaign. “Today I ask President Biden to withdraw from the presidential campaign,” he wrote in a statement obtained by Politico. “The stakes are high, and we are on a losing course.” A few days ago, Peters had indicated on CNN that he was “pretty close” to taking this stand.

• Meanwhile, Donald Trump and his campaign want Joe Biden to stay in the race, according to people familiar with the matter, and have discussed taking steps to ensure they don’t push the president to withdraw amid escalating panic among Democrats following his recent debate performance.

• Representative Eric Sorensen of Illinois then also joined Democrats calling on Biden to step down from his campaign. “In 2020, Joe Biden ran for president with the purpose of putting country over party,” Sorenson wrote in a statement. “Today I am asking him to do that again.”

• Both Politico and Vanity Fair reported that George Clooney reached out to Obama before publishing an op-ed in the New York Times calling for Biden to drop out.
  “While Obama did not encourage or advise Clooney to say what he said, he also didn’t object to it, we’re told from people familiar with their exchange,” Politico wrote. Vanity Fair also reported that Obama “did not try to stop [the op-ed]” by the actor and Democratic donor.

• CNN is reported that former president Barack Obama, under whom Biden served as Vice President, met privately with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to discuss their mutual concerns over Biden’s presidential bid. Obama’s doubts over Biden’s ability to win is “one of the worst kept secrets in Washington”, CNN reported. “Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi have spoken privately about Joe Biden and the future of his 2024 campaign. Both the former president and ex-speaker expressed concerns about how much harder they think it’s become for the president to beat Donald Trump. Neither is quite sure what to do,” CNN reported.

John Crace’s politics sketch: ‘You could sense the embarrassment as Biden spoke’

John Crace

Should I stay or should I go? If I stay there will be trouble … This wasn’t so much a press conference, more a job interview conducted in front of an audience of millions. One where almost everyone had already made up their mind that they would rather almost anyone else got the nod.

This was politics as a bloodsport. Painful to watch. Like intruding on a personal grief. Because there could be no winner here. Were Joe Biden to be word perfect and razor sharp, the doubts would remain about his cognitive abilities. The US president cannot erase his recent past. The gaffes come with ever increasing frequency. The obvious confusion. The long silences. The middle-distance stares.

The tipping point was last month’s presidential debate with Donald Trump. Biden tried to pass it off as one bad moment. The reality was that it was an excruciating 90 minutes. A complete meltdown no pretence or artifice could cover up. You would be embarrassed if this was an elderly relative. No one should be allowed to humiliate themselves in this way. But this was the most powerful man in the western world.

There was no coming back. Senior Democrats have become increasingly vocal about calling for him to step down. Nancy Pelosi has been notably careful in what she says. Congressmen have spoken out. George Clooney – reportedly with the implicit support of Barack Obama – has said it’s time for Biden to go.

But Joe is the only person who can’t read the room. He could step down with dignity. He could point to his record over the last four years and say that at 81 he has had enough. That it’s time for someone else to take over. Yet Biden has dug his heels in and so this can only end one way. With him being dethroned. Either by losing the presidency to Trump or being forced out by increasingly desperate members of his own party.

Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has met with Trump.

Orban flew to Florida on Thursday to meet with the former US president after the end of the NATO summit in Washington, AFP reports.

Right-wing Orbán, whose country took over the rotating presidency of the European Union this month, has been a vocal supporter of Trump, and last met the 2024 Republican presidential hopeful in March.

“We discussed ways to make peace,” Orban said in a post on social media Thursday evening with a picture of the two leaders meeting. “The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!”

The post did not elaborate further.