It was an extraordinary moment in American politics.

President Joe Biden stood at a microphone as the nation’s capital hosted a NATO summit, trying to reassure American allies and enemies, voters, donors, opponents, and members of his own Democratic Party that he is fit to serve and run for reelection.

But minutes in, the gaffes started. The president mixed up his opponent and vice president, an ally and an enemy.

Those clips will be shared more than anything else he said Thursday night.

Press conferences should be a routine part of the job, not the most important appearance of a president’s career. To communicate with the press is to communicate with the public. Biden has done this fewer times than any other president in recent memory. Only Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan had fewer press conferences than Biden. Thursday marked his first solo press conference of 2024; he hadn’t taken questions from a full press corp since November. He hasn’t had a full Cabinet meeting since October, and a new CNN report shows that those meetings have been scripted.

His public appearances, such as his State of the Union address on March 7, usually involve a teleprompter, which is common with presidents and other high-profile public officials.

Most of Biden’s media appearances have been stage-managed and sparing, and recently, they have been used as a form of damage control. Thursday night’s press conference was also stage-managed, focusing on foreign policy — an area where he’s steeped in knowledge after 50 years in elected office. The questions he faced were about his candidacy and the foreign policy topics he easily rattles off. And while he could point to some improving economic numbers, he didn’t talk about the financial pain many Americans are feeling.

The exercise was elementary: The president needed to demonstrate that he could handle a press conference. That alone spoke louder than anything he said during the hour-long session. His words did little to quell the growing exodus of donors and Democrats who are calling for him to step aside and allow someone else to take on Donald Trump in these last four months of the 2024 presidential election.

Democrats say Trump is a grave threat to democracy and the risk of losing to him in November is too great for the country to take. They say if Biden steps down, he will be regarded as one of the best presidents in history, his legacy cemented along with that of George Washington who selflessly relinquished power that he could have gripped for a lifetime.

But Biden has not answered those calls. He seemingly believes his place in history is to defeat Trump twice, despite what polls and public opinions say.

“I’m not in this for my legacy. I’m in this to complete the job I started,” Biden said early in the press conference.

As he’s done for two weeks, he continued to resist calls to give up his presumptive Democratic nomination.

“I’m just gonna keep moving,” Biden said. He laughed off concerns about his schedule and said he needed to pace himself a little bit more.

Biden insisted he’s the most qualified person to run for president and that his health is “in good shape.”

About an hour before he faced the press, he erroneously introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Russian President Vladimir Putin. Though Biden quickly corrected himself, these gaffes will be overanalyzed because of his disastrous debate performance on June 27.

As the press peppered Biden with questions they’d wanted to ask for weeks, how he answered was more important than the answers themselves. Viewers were looking for strength and lucidity. But his press conference, which began an hour late, likely didn’t undo the memory of his lousy debate 14 days earlier or his Putin-Zelenskyy mix-up a couple hours earlier.

Just minutes into the first question he answered, he mixed up his vice president with his opponent, referring to Trump as his vice president.

There was high anxiety and immediate calls for him to step aside before the debate had ended as Biden supporters felt unmoored. But then he seemed to plug the holes of his sinking ship. He rallied the Black voters who helped him win in 2020. He kept detractors on Capitol Hill to less than 10 percent of Congress. And he defiantly and forcefully told the world that he wasn’t leaving the race. It seemed like he might outlast the headwinds.

But money talks louder than ambition. And once the largest Democratic donors started to back away, top leaders in Congress went from firmly with Biden to wishy-washy.

Voters didn’t need billionaire business leaders or George Clooney to tell them how to feel. In a new ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll, an overwhelming majority of voters, 85%, said Biden is too old for a second term, and 67% said he should drop out of the race.

Perhaps a bigger blow to Biden are the battleground results that show him losing to Trump by nearly 10 points in his native Pennsylvania. Biden has always been beloved in Pennsylvania, especially in Philadelphia and his hometown of Scranton, but incumbents with approval numbers as low as this president typically lose Pennsylvania.

In his press conference, he didn’t give voters many reasons to change their minds. He repeated what he had said for two weeks and claimed he was the best person for the job.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who he confused with Trump during his first answer of the night, was campaigning in Greensboro, North Carolina, trying to remind voters that Biden is a fighter who believes when you get knocked down, you get back up.

But, if polls are to be believed, most voters don’t want him to fight. They want him to bow out gracefully.

Democrats will have to convince Biden to quit while he’s behind.

Candy Woodall is the opinion editor at The Baltimore Sun. She wants to know what you thought of Biden’s press conference. She can be reached at cwoodall@baltsun.com.