Joe Biden said he was “completely ruling out” ending his re-election bid on Friday at the start of a make-or-break weekend of public appearances intended to quell calls from within his party to drop out of the presidential race.

Biden sat for his first television interview since his disastrous performance in last week’s presidential debate, which sparked panic in the Democratic party.

In a clip of the interview released by ABC News, Biden said the debate was a “bad episode”, claiming he was “exhausted” and “sick” on the night.

But amid reports that members of Biden’s family are blaming his top campaign staff for the president’s halting performance, he said his appearance on the debate stage was “nobody’s fault but mine”.

The interview came shortly after Biden delivered a defiant speech in Wisconsin, a swing state, telling a crowd of supporters that he would not bow to the mounting pressure on him to quit.

“Guess what? They’re trying to push me out of the race. Let me say this as clearly as I can: I’m staying in the race. I’ll beat Donald Trump.”

But Biden’s bullishness was undercut by a report that an influential Democratic senator was attempting to assemble a group of the party’s senators to urge the president to drop his re-election bid.

Mark Warner, a senator from Virginia, told colleagues that Biden could no longer remain in the race for the White House, The Washington Post reported on Friday. A spokesperson for Warner did not respond to a request for comment. When Biden was later asked by a reporter about Warner, the president said the senator was “the only one considering that”.

Separately, Maura Healey, the Democratic governor of Massachusetts, became the first state governor to suggest Biden step aside. Healey was among governors who met the president for emergency talks at the White House this week.

She issued a statement on Friday afternoon saying she was “deeply grateful” for Biden’s leadership, but urged him to “listen to the American people and carefully evaluate whether he remains our best hope to defeat Donald Trump”.

But Biden brushed aside the concerns again on Friday evening, telling reporters that he was “completely ruling . . . out” leaving the race. When a reporter asked him if he was the best candidate to beat Trump, Biden replied: “I did it before.” When the reporter asked a follow-up, he replied: “You’ve been wrong about everything so far. You were wrong about 2022 . . . you were wrong about 2023 . . . so look, we’ll see.”

Reporters travelling with Biden noted several people standing outside the venue where he spoke in Wisconsin holding signs urging him to “bow out” and “pass the torch”. Another sign read: “Give it up, Joe,” while one said: “Pres Biden — serve your country — not your ego.”

On Sunday, Biden will make a campaign stop in another swing state, Pennsylvania. The trip through critical states comes as he battles to quell deep discontent in his party about his determination to stay in the race. Despite Democratic governors publicly voicing support for Biden this week, scores of lawmakers, party operatives and influential donors are now agitating for him to be replaced with a younger candidate.

The pre-recorded interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos, a former adviser to Democratic president Bill Clinton, was being billed as a chance for the president to allay concerns about his mental acuity.

But White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre sought to downplay the significance of the interview, telling reporters on Air Force One on Friday that Biden was preparing for the conversation “like he does with any other interview”.

Some donors have pushed California Governor Gavin Newsom and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer to replace the president as the Democratic candidate, the Financial Times reported on Thursday. Vice-president Kamala Harris is in pole position to replace Biden if he drops out.

A handful of Democratic lawmakers have come out publicly in recent days calling for Biden to end his re-election bid. An increasing number of megadonors — including media heiress Abigail Disney and Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel — have said they would not give Biden any more money.

Biden has also been weakened by damaging public opinion polls that show him trailing Trump by several points both nationwide and in the battleground states that are likely to determine the outcome of November’s election.

But Biden and his campaign have refused to blink in the face of the pressure. His campaign on Friday said it would spend another $50mn on advertising in the month of July, including for ad spots that would run during this month’s Republican National Convention and the Olympics.

Harris, Newsom and Whitmer have remained publicly loyal to the president’s campaign. At a July 4 celebration at the White House on Thursday evening, Biden joined hands with his vice-president as some people in the crowd chanted, “four more years”.

But other prominent Democrats are more reluctant to share the stage with the president. When Biden visited Wisconsin on Friday, he was joined by the state’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers — but not Tammy Baldwin, the state’s Democratic senator, who is polling far ahead of the president.

The latest FiveThirtyEight polling average shows Trump leading Biden by just shy of two points in Wisconsin.

Trump has kept a relatively low profile since the debate, allowing media attention to remain on Biden’s difficulties and Democratic disarray.

But the former president has slammed Harris in recent days, and on Thursday night challenged Biden to another “no holds barred” debate. A second debate between them is already scheduled for September.

“What a great evening it would be, just the two of us, one on one, in a good, old fashioned debate, the way they used to be,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform. “ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, ANYPLACE!!!”.

Biden said on Friday that he remained “committed” to attending the September debate.

OROVILLE, Calif. — Firefighters made progress Friday against a California wildfire that triggered extensive evacuation orders, but damage assessments raised the number of destroyed structures to 25, and forecasters said heat and fire risk were expanding on the West Coast.

Containment of the Thompson Fire near the Butte County city of Oroville rose overnight from 29% to 46%, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The fire was measured at just under 6 square miles after only slight growth overnight.

Most evacuation orders covering about 17,000 people were lifted Thursday.

Firefighters “did a really good job yesterday” enforcing containment lines, and wind hasn’t been a factor, said Cal Fire Capt. Alejandro Cholico, a fire spokesperson.

A new blaze dubbed the French Fire erupted Thursday evening and triggered evacuations in the small Gold Rush town of Mariposa in the Sierra Nevada foothills along a highway leading to Yosemite National Park.

Flames from the French Fire burn on a hillside above Mariposa, Calif., on Friday.

Noah Berger/AP

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Bulldozers and crews built a line across the entire eastern side of Mariposa as flames spread over 1.3 square miles before fire activity moderated.

“Winds have calmed which has helped firefighters make progress overnight,” a Cal Fire status report said.

In addition to structures destroyed by the Thompson Fire, six others were damaged. There was no immediate information on the types of structures, but several homes were seen ablaze after the fire broke out Tuesday morning about 70 miles north of Sacramento.

The number of reported firefighter injuries was lowered from four to two, Cholico said. The cause of the blaze remained under investigation.

The Oroville region is familiar with catastrophic events. The deadliest and most destructive wildfire in state history nearly wiped out the town of Paradise in Butte County in 2018.

Forecasters, meanwhile, warned California’s blistering heat wave will continue and spread into the Pacific Northwest and adjacent western states.

“The duration of this heat is also concerning as scorching above average temperatures are forecast to linger into next week,” the National Weather Service wrote.

Among extremes, the forecast for Furnace Creek in Death Valley National Park calls for daytime highs of 129 degrees on Sunday and then around 130 through Wednesday. The official world record for hottest temperature recorded on Earth was 134 degrees in Death Valley in July 1913, but some experts dispute that measurement and say the real record was 130 recorded there in July 2021.

Numerous wildfires have erupted since the late spring across California, largely feeding on abundant grasses that grew during back-to-back wet winters and have since dried.

Most have been kept small, but some have grown large. The biggest active fire is the Basin Fire in the Sierra National Forest, where nearly 22 square miles have burned since late June. It was 46% contained Friday.

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Political narratives are extremely hard to shift once they have set. There are still people who erroneously attribute Labour’s 1992 election defeat to Neil Kinnock’s over-exuberance at a party rally. Now, as the Conservative party digests the most unpalatable result in its entire history, the first battle will be to set the official version of why they lost. And since this is central to the looming leadership contest, the fight has already begun. In fact it started well before the election.

Where all agree is that this week’s loss marks the collapse of the broad, contradictory and probably unsustainable coalition assembled by Boris Johnson after Brexit, which brought white working class and Leave-supporting voters into the Tory tent alongside successful liberal-minded globalists.

But there, the debate starts. On one side are those Tory rightwingers like Suella Braverman and David Frost, who argue that on tax, immigration and net zero, the party abandoned its core voters, opening up the space for the success of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

For them the wipeout is entirely explained by a split on the right. In this account Rishi Sunak is a woke, Tory left-winger whose ideological betrayal was compounded by his ineptitude in calling the election before it was necessary and running a disastrous campaign.

The more convincing counter-narrative is that voters felt worse off and were repelled by a government they concluded was incompetent. Defeat was sealed by the Covid lockdown breaches of Johnson’s Downing Street and Liz Truss’s mini-Budget.

Having already lost liberal-minded voters over Brexit, they then lost their new coalition of voters too. But while this explanation makes more sense, the party still needs to heal the split.

Traditionally the Tories would simply move a notch to the right and steal enough of Reform’s clothes to regain their supporters. However, this new opponent will not easily let itself be out-righted. Each move right will also cost votes on the other, more liberal side of the Tory coalition. 

The other problem is that the radical right now has a toehold on Westminster politics and Farage believes he can supersede the Conservatives. Those calling for a new nationalist right argue that there is no point in trying to win back lost liberal Tories.

Reform looks to the success of the radical right in Europe and asks whether it cannot turn into the main voice of the right in the UK. Farage’s ambition will only have been fortified by his modest parliamentary breakthrough and the 98 seats where Reform is currently in second place, almost all of them to Labour. 

Farage argues his party can reach parts of the electorate, notably the white working class and some young men, who backed Johnson but no longer think any of the main parties speaks for them. While the primary damage in this election was to the Tories, he argues that the next time it could be to Labour.

So what next? The UK’s electoral system punishes splits. That means the odds are still in the Conservatives’ favour against Reform. They have more votes, more than twenty times the seats and a historically recognised brand. They will also hope that Reform’s success reflects a temporary disaffection which can be clawed back.

For this to be true, however, the Tories need to find a leader with the confidence to argue for the UK’s economic interests, who can rebuild a broad coalition and speak to the populist vote while not alienating core supporters. This probably means recognising the potency of the immigration issue while finding a way not to put off large sections of liberal and wealth-generating Britain on all other matters. Above all, it means reconnecting with younger voters and families by showing that the party has an economic offer for them.

The challenge is that Farage is one of the most effective communicators in politics. He is rethinking his pitch, softening some of his free-market instincts and looking at how to appeal to younger voters. The Tories are not currently blessed with a similarly stand out figure.

The only other path, unless Farage is gifted the electoral reform he seeks, is some form of unspoken pact with Reform. But this probably requires a few more defeats and stalemates before it could happen.

What is clear is that right-wing politics is now in flux. At its heart is the battle over whether future success lies in a broad coalition built on restored reputation for competence or a radical realignment of the right.

Logic, history and the British electoral system strongly suggests the former. Surrendering to the Faragist path rather than taking it on and defeating it would herald the end of the centre right and a capitulation to unserious politics. But the only guarantee is that as long as the split remains, the right should get used to opposition.

robert.shrimsley@ft.com