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Topline
President Joe Biden opened the NATO summit Tuesday in a speech honoring its 75th anniversary and reiterating Ukraine can beat Russia in what was a highly anticipated speech as Biden works to prove he can serve another four years.
Key Facts
Biden spoke for about 15 minutes at the opening of the summit in Washington, D.C. and emphasized NATO’s unity behind Ukraine in its war with Russia, saying “Ukraine can and will stop (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, especially with our full collective support.”
The three-day summit is largely to emphasize the support for Ukraine, but has become an opportunity for Biden to show he can govern amid increasing concerns about his age and calls for him to step down in the presidential race.
The president also said NATO is “better resourced than it ever has been,” pointing out 23 countries will be spending 2% or more of their national gross domestic product on defense compared to the nine countries that were when he took office in 2020.
Biden took the opportunity of the speech to announce a new air defense equipment donation to Ukraine and to give Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg the Presidential medal of freedom to honor his leadership of NATO over the past decade.
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Key Background
All eyes were on Biden for Tuesday’s speech amid the increased calls for him to leave the presidential race against former President Donald Trump. Since the two presumptive nominees debated almost two weeks ago, at least nine congressional Democrats have called on Biden to leave the race and make way for a replacement candidate. Since Biden’s poor debate performance, however, he has insisted he is not leaving the race. In a letter to congressional Democrats on Monday, Biden wrote, “I can respond to all this by saying clearly and unequivocally: I wouldn’t be running again if I did not absolutely believe I was the best person to beat Donald Trump in 2024.” The president still has two days of NATO summit events ahead of him that will likely prompt significant scrutiny. On Wednesday, Biden is scheduled to host a meeting with new U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the White House, meet with NATO members at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center and host a dinner for heads of state at the White House. On Thursday, Biden will participate in a North Atlantic Council meeting, attend a NATO-Ukraine Council meeting and host an event with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
What To Watch For
Biden’s press conference at the end of the summit Thursday, which will be his first open question-and-answer session with journalists since November 2022, according to The New York Times. Bloomberg journalist Justin Sink cheekily said Thursday’s event would be a “big boy press conference”—a phrase Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and national security communications adviser John Kirby repeated multiple times in a White House press briefing Monday.
