US President Joe Biden faces a major test of his presidential re-election campaign when he takes on a solo press conference at the NATO summit at 11.30pm Irish time.
Every word he utters, every step he takes, Mr Biden now has the eyes of a worried world on him, watching for another faltering performance like his June debate that may spark fresh calls for him to leave the 2024 presidential race.
It will be his first time facing the press alone since November.
Mr Biden, 81, will take an unspecified number of questions from reporters, in an event expected to last around 20 minutes.
In the two weeks since the June 27 debate, Mr Biden had another disappointing performance in an ABC News interview, reinforcing some Democrats' concerns over his ability to beat Donald Trump in the 5 November election or serve another four years.
But President Biden has also participated in a wide array of public events without a slip-up, including campaign stops in North Carolina, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Virginia.
A well-orchestrated, forceful NATO summit speech on Tuesday closed with Mr Biden carefully placing the Presidential Medal of Freedom around Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg's neck, to the relief of fellow Democrats and White House staff.
Every appearance by Mr Biden will be examined, in perpetuity, analysts said. The scrutiny comes as Mr Trump, 78, continues to repeat falsehoods, including that he won the 2020 election, in sometimes incoherent rally speeches.
Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, said Mr Biden is in "highly unusual" territory for an American president.
"If it's a little mistake, slurring a word or something, I think people would just let it pass. But if there is anything approaching what we saw at the debate, the Democratic Party would be thrown into turmoil," Mr Sabato said.
Even if Mr Biden never repeats his debate behavior, he faces a risk that momentum to push him aside could still grow.
Any shift could happen within weeks. Democrats are organising a virtual convention in late July to nominate Mr Biden ahead of the formal DNC Convention nomination in Chicago that starts 19 August.
Some Democrats have suggested that putting Mr Biden into the public eye more often would help ease concerns.
Over the course of his three-and-a-half years in office, Mr Biden has held fewer press conferences and interviews combined than presidents dating to Ronald Reagan in the 1980s at the same point in their presidency, data by presidential scholar Martha Joynt Kumar showed.
Recent remarks by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's, which ignored Mr Biden's repeated insistence that he is staying in the race, appeared to be the harbinger of a fresh wave of calls from fellow Democrats to exit the race.
Ms Pelosi said on MSNBC she was encouraging colleagues on Capitol Hill with concerns about Mr Biden to refrain from airing them while he hosts the NATO summit.
"I've said to everyone: let's just hold off. Whatever you're thinking, either tell somebody privately, but you don't have to put that out on the table until we see how we go this week," she said, describing Mr Biden's strong remarks at the NATO summit on Tuesday as "spectacular."
She declined to say definitively that she wanted Mr Biden to run. "I want him to do whatever he decides to do," she said. "We're all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short."
Other Democrats echoed Ms Pelosi yesterday, suggesting Mr Biden's efforts to quell dissent within his party had not succeeded.
Hollywood star George Clooney, a Democrat who co-hosted a star-studded fundraiser for Mr Biden last month, withdrew his support with a damning opinion piece in the New York Times saying Mr Biden was not the same man he was in 2020.
In his opinion piece, Clooney wrote: "It's devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe 'big F-ing deal' Biden of 2010. He wasn't even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate," Mr Clooney wrote.
"We are not going to win in November with this president. On top of that, we won't win the House, and we're going to lose the Senate."
Mr Biden, eager to change the story, has surrounded himself with communities of his staunchest supporters, including black Democratic politicians and voters.
His campaign has framed sticking with him as a return of the loyalty he has shown them through his half-century of public life.
Mr Biden was greeted with raucous applause when he met yesterday with a group of labour leaders, an important part of his political base, joining an AFL-CIO executive council meeting in Washington to discuss "their shared commitment to defeating Donald Trump," the Biden campaign said.
Mr Biden listed high rents, expensive groceries and a lack of housing as issues to be tackled going forward.
Labour votes helped Mr Biden defeat Mr Trump in competitive states, including Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, in 2020.
