The Trump campaign said Wednesday it will not agree to a Vice-Presidential debate before the Democratic National Convention, pointing to the calls for President Joe Biden to drop out of the race as its reason.

“We don’t know who the Democrat nominee for Vice President is going to be, so we can’t lock in a date before their convention,” Trump campaign aide Brian Hughes said in a statement. “To do so would be unfair to Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, Gretchen Whitmer, or whoever Kamala Harris picks as her running mate.”

Biden has insisted that he does not plan to drop out of the race.

In an interview on Newsmax Tuesday night, Trump’s running mate JD Vance indicated that he’d be willing to a debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, who previously agreed to an invitation from CBS to debate on July 23 or Aug. 13.

“We want to debate Vice President Harris because it’s important for the American people to see the contrast,” he said.

– Josephine Rozzelle

President Joe Biden said he might reconsider whether to stay in the race against GOP nominee Donald Trump if his doctors told him that he was suffering from a “medical condition.”

“Is there anything that you would look to you, personally…to say, ‘if I see that, I will reevaluate?'” BET host Ed Gordon asked Biden in an interview set to air in full on Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET.

“If I had some medical condition that emerged, if somebody, if doctors came to me and said, ‘you got this problem, that problem,'” Biden replied, according to a video clip shared ahead of the broadcast.

Biden, 81, has resolutely rejected calls from within his own party to withdraw from the race after his abysmal performance in last month’s presidential debate.

— Kevin Breuninger

Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat heavily favored to win a U.S. Senate seat in November, called on Biden to exit the presidential race and let the party nominate another candidate.

Schiff said had “serious concerns about whether the President can defeat Donald Trump in November.”

“While the choice to withdraw from the campaign is President Biden’s alone, I believe it is time for him to pass the torch,” Schiff said.

– Dan Mangan

Vice President Kamala Harris made her first on-camera public comment about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at his Pennsylvania rally where one crowd member was killed and two others were critically injured.

Harris opened her remarks at a Michigan abortion rights panel by sending her condolences to the family of Corey Comperatore, the former Pennsylvania firefighter who was killed. She also said she was “thankful” that Trump was not more seriously hurt at the Saturday shooting.

“Violence is never acceptable,” Harris said. “One of the questions we now confront is about the way we should engage with one another in this campaign.”

Harris then dovetailed her message of sympathy into political talking points, making the case for hers and President Biden’s reelection.

“Just as we must reject political violence, we must also embrace a robust discussion about what is at stake in this election,” she said. “One of the ideas and one of the principles that is at stake in this election is the issue of reproductive freedom, and that is why I am here today.”

— Rebecca Picciotto

Roughly two-thirds of Democrats think President Biden should bow out of the presidential race and let someone else take the top of the ticket, according to new polling from the past several days.

A new AP/NORC poll published Wednesday found that 65% of Democrats believe Biden should step aside. From July 11 to July 15, the poll surveyed 1,253 adults. It had a margin of error of +/- 3.8 percentage points.

That result aligned with a similar finding from an NBC News poll released Sunday, which showed that 62% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning registered voters also thought Biden should drop out. The poll surveyed 800 registered voters from July 7 to July 9. It had a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percentage points.

Biden has repeatedly rejected polling data that has shown drop-out pressure escalating in the weeks since his debate flop against Donald Trump. Rather, he maintains that the media and political pundits has been disproportionately covering his political vulnerabilities rather than Trump’s.

As of Wednesday, at least 20 Democratic lawmakers had publicly called on Biden to drop out of the race, including most recently California Rep. Adam Schiff.

The Democratic rifts present a split screen with day three of the Republican National Convention where the GOP has vigorously rallied around the Trump-Vance ticket, especially in the wake of the Pennsylvania rally shooting where the former president came within an inch of a deadly bullet.

— Rebecca Picciotto

The Democratic National Committee pledged that its virtual roll call process to designate President Biden the party’s official presidential nominee will not start before Aug. 1, according to a letter to delegates obtained by NBC News.

The virtual roll call process could have begun as soon as next week, which some Biden allies were pushing for. But other Democrats wanted the DNC to delay its early voting process to give the party time to lock down a new nominee as concerns mount about Biden’s age.

“Our goal is not to fast-track,” wrote Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Bishop Leah Daughtry, co-chairs of the DNC’s rules committee. “None of this will be rushed.”

The DNC’s letter eased some concerns on Capitol Hill.

Shortly after the letter was released, House Democrats called off their own effort to collect signatures on a drafted letter that would have called on the DNC to hold the nomination process in person at the Democratic convention, as is typical.

“We’re glad to see that the pressure worked, and the DNC will not be moving forward with the rushed process, so we won’t be sending a letter at this time,” a spokesperson for California Rep. Jared Huffman, one of the Democratic lawmakers leading the push, told CNBC.

Though the DNC promised that the virtual voting process will not kick off before August, Walz and Daughtry noted, it will be finished before the Democratic convention starts on Aug. 19.

Read the full story here.

— Rebecca Picciotto

Former Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro is scheduled to speak in Milwaukee just hours after he completed a four-month jail sentence in Miami.

A federal jury convicted Navarro in September on two counts of contempt of Congress for his refusal to comply with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

The U.S. Supreme Court had rejected Navarro’s requests to get out of jail early while he appealed his sentence.

— Kevin Breuninger