California Gov. Gavin Newsom remains steadfastly committed to the Biden-Harris 2024 presidential ticket, despite admitting during an Independence Day Democratic campaign event in Michigan that the presidential debate against former President Donald Trump “did not go as well” as Biden had hoped. 

“I was asked and tasked by President Biden, proudly, to fly from California to Georgia to represent the campaign right after that debate,” Newsom told a crowd of supporters at the Van Buren Dems BBQ for Biden-Harris in South Haven, Michigan, on Thursday. 

“I had a lot of talking points in mind, you may have noticed if you saw me, I didn’t bring them with me. And that’s to make the obvious point — things did not go as well as the campaign had hoped, and obviously did not go as well as President Biden had hoped,” he said. 

Newsom — who has vehemently denied claims that he’s running a “shadow campaign” to replace Biden — was among the 20 Democratic governors who had a private meeting with Biden on Wednesday night at the White House for about an hour and a half. 

NEWSOM’S PROGRESSIVE ACTIVISM, DEBATE SKILLS AMONG VULNERABILITIES IN POTENTIAL NATIONAL CAMPAIGN: EXPERT

“It could have gone two or three hours,” Newsom said of the meeting. “And I mean this with absolute conviction. That was the Joe Biden I remember from two weeks ago. That was the Joe Biden that I remember from two years ago. That’s the Joe Biden that I’m looking forward to re-electing as President of the United States.”

“Things did not go as well as the campaign had hoped, and obviously did not go as well as President Biden had hoped.”

— California Gov. Gavin Newsom

The aim of the meeting was to shore up support among the party’s top leaders and stave off diminishing confidence in Biden’s candidacy.

Among the Democratic governors who were planning to attend in person were Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who leads the Democratic Governors Association; Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer; Maryland Gov. Wes Moore; and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, among others.

Newsom added he’s been “going wherever” he’s been asked by the administration, and doing “whatever task, large and small, because I believe in this man.”

DESANTIS VS NEWSOM FACE OFF ON ABORTION, TRANSGENDERISM, WOKENESS AND MORE

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks at a news conference in Sacramento, California, on March 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

“I believe in his character,” he said.

The Golden State governor will also be headed to New Hampshire to headline a Democratic campaign event next week, fueling more speculation that he may be preparing to step in if Biden backs out of the 2024 race. 

New Hampshire is a key swing state in the general election and Newsom, who is a top surrogate for President Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign, will also be campaigning for the president and other Democrats up and down the ticket during his stop in the Granite State, according to sources familiar with his plans.

FETTERMAN HITS NEWSOM FOR NOT HAVING ‘GUTS’ TO ADMIT HE’S RUNNING SHADOW CAMPAIGN AGAINST BIDEN

Newsom insists he is not gunning to replace Biden. (Getty Images)

After Biden’s lackluster performance during the debate against Trump, Newsom assured reporters in the spin room that he remained firmly behind Biden, who has faced significant criticism even from members of his own party for a lackluster performance.

“I will never turn my back on President Biden,” Newsom said Thursday in a comment that appeared designed to dispel rumors that he’s running a shadow campaign. “I don’t know a Democrat in my party that would do so. And especially after tonight, we have his back.”

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

Newsom added: “I spent a lot of time with him. I know Joe Biden. I know what he’s accomplished in the last three and a half years. I know what he’s capable of. And I have no trepidations.”

Leading up to last week’s first presidential debate of the 2024 election cycle, Biden’s mental acuity became the center of political discourse last month after a bombshell Wall Street Journal report — which the White House dismissed — revealed that many lawmakers on Capitol Hill had questions about Biden’s mental acuity after many said his aging was apparent in private meetings.

Fox News Digital’s Paul Steinhauser and Bradford Betz contributed to this report. 

When Barbara Boxer arrived in the U.S. Senate, her image as a fiery liberal from Marin County — land of crystals, hot tubs and aging hippies — preceded her.

It was not a good thing.

“The word was that I was this very militant feminist and the guys were frightened to death,” Boxer recalled.

The colleague who smoothed her path — “She’s good people,” he assured the Old Bulls — was Joe Biden, who by 1993 was already starting his third decade on Capitol Hill.

The two grew close, personally and politically.

“We really bonded on protecting dolphins and protecting women,” Boxer said of their legislative work (regulating purse seine nets, cracking down on domestic violence), which had begun in the 1980s when she was in the House.

Boxer endorsed Biden when he ran for president in 1988 and again in 2020, notably passing over the Democrat who replaced her in the Senate, Kamala Harris.

Given all that, Boxer was slack-jawed as she and family members watched Biden mumble and bumble his way through his disastrous debate performance last week. “This wasn’t the Joe we knew,” she said. “Something was off.”

Instantly, what had been a persistent, low-grade nervousness among Democrats turned into a full-fledged party freak-out. A small but growing chorus has called for the 81-year-old incumbent to withdraw from the presidential race, before it’s too late and he drags his party down with him. (Many more express that sentiment in private.)

Boxer isn’t there. Not yet, anyway.

Two weeks, she said. Give Biden two weeks to demonstrate that his zombified appearance in Atlanta was an anomaly.

“The man has done it, time and time again,” Boxer said this week in a conversation from her home in Palm Springs. “Every time he’s been counted out, he’s come back. Can he do it one more time? I don’t know the answer. But out of respect and admiration for what he’s done, let’s give him the time to do it.

“And if he can’t, he can’t,” Boxer said, “and there will be someone else.”

That’s not exactly a stand-firm-until-the-last-dog-dies endorsement.

But it’s not casting a gravely wounded Biden to the wolves, either.

When the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein was going through her widely chronicled mental and physical decline, there were widespread calls for her to quit and make way for someone younger, more vigorous and more acute. Boxer, who made history with Feinstein when the two were elected to the Senate in tandem, offered a gentle nudge. There is life — and a good one — to be had after leaving the Senate, she advised her former colleague in a 2021 interview.

But Boxer never overtly pushed Feinstein, the way many others did. Her fellow Democrat died in September at age 90, hours after casting her final vote on the Senate floor.

The situation with Biden is different, Boxer said.

“We don’t know what happened with Joe,” she said, still puzzled nearly a week later.

She speculated. Perhaps his lifelong stutter kicked in under the studio lights? Maybe Biden suffered from a terrible head cold, or from cold medication he’d taken?

“I think the president owes the country an explanation,” Boxer said. And more crucially, she went on, he needs to show voters that he can not only take on Donald Trump, but that he can also defeat him in November.

“He needs to be out without a script. Without a teleprompter and just face the press, face the public,” she said. “That’s critical.”

Biden has made a few public appearances, including a comparatively feisty showing at a North Carolina rally the day after the debate. He spoke to reporters following the Supreme Court’s carte blanche decision granting presidents near-total immunity, and again while discussing the country’s sizzling weather at an emergency operations center in Washington.

But Biden worked off a teleprompter and refused to take reporters’ questions.

The president’s first without-a-net appearance is a scheduled interview Friday with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. The stakes are exceedingly high. Another tottering performance could lead to a dam burst of calls from Democrats for Biden to step aside.

Meantime, polls taken after Thursday night’s debate show Biden losing ground to Trump and voters expressing heightened concern about the president’s mental and cognitive health.

Like many people, Boxer speaks of a Trump restoration in apocalyptic terms.

“This race is like no other,” she said. “We have to stop a man who says he’s going to be ‘a dictator on Day One.’ Who wants to imprison his opponents. … It gets worse and worse, day by day.”

She extolled Biden’s performance over the last 3½ years: his record on job creation, addressing climate change, fighting to lower the cost of prescription drugs. But that’s all in the past, and none of it seems to matter very much to voters who, in the here and now, worry and wonder very much about Biden’s capabilities going forward.

Democrats are nervous, Boxer said. “I’m nervous. I’m very nervous.”

But she’s still willing to give Biden a shot at one more political comeback. Two weeks, she said. “Because in August we have the convention, and if there is going to be an open convention, there needs to be time for people to decide who they’re supporting.”

That’s a long way from “Biden or bust.” It shows even the best of friends and greatest of admirers have limits to their hope and patience with a president whose mental and physical capacities seem to be touch-and-go.

But there’s no room for sentimentality with so much at stake.

Hours after the White House told reporters that President Biden had not had any recent medical exams, the president reportedly contradicted his press secretary by telling governors that he had a recent medical checkup.

When pressed about the president’s health during a press briefing on Wednesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre explicitly told reporters that Biden has not had any medical exams since his last annual physical.

“Has the president had any medical exams since his last annual physical in February?” CNN’s Min Jung “MJ” Lee asked.

“And got – and we were able to talk to the – to his doctor about that, and that is a no,” Jean-Pierre said.

NEWSOM DOUBLES DOWN ON SUPPORT FOR BIDEN IN MICHIGAN: ‘I BELIEVE IN HIS CHARACTER’

Jean-Pierre reiterated that the 81-year-old president had not received any kind of medical exam.

“He hasn’t had any kind of medical exam?” Jung said.

“No,” Jean-Pierre replied.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, left, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speak to the media outside the White House on July 3, 2024. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Jean-Pierre’s comments came just hours before Biden met with Democrat governors at the White House on Wednesday night. 

According to the New York Times, Biden told governors that had seen the White House physician to check on the cold his campaign said that he had during the presidential debate against Trump.

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Biden also reportedly told governors that he would no longer schedule events after 8 p.m. so he could “get more sleep,” the outlet reported.

When questioned about the seemingly contradictory comments, the White House sent the following statement to Fox News Digital:

“Several days later, the President was seen to check on his cold and was recovering well,” the White House press office clarified.

President Biden is shown during a visit to the D.C. Emergency Operations Center on July 2, 2024. (AP/Evan Vucci)

The comments come as Biden’s closest allies, politicians and the media have raised concerns about the president’s age and mental acuity.

With a raspy voice and rambling answers, Biden struggled during portions of last week’s presidential debate.

Following the debate, Democrats and liberal media figures appeared to be in a “panic” after Biden’s performance.

Voters, lawmakers and media outlets have expressed concerns over Biden’s age and ability to serve a second term after the debate. (Getty Images)

The optics led to a full-on meltdown in Democrat-friendly media, with journalists at various outlets reporting on dozens of Democratic Party officials who said Biden should consider refusing his party’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.

Some strategists have suggested the Democratic Party must act quickly to replace Biden before his nomination is made official.

Vice President Harris has been largely ruled out as a potential replacement due to her unpopularity with voters. California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer have each previously been floated as a potential last-minute replacement.