Biden ‘not sure’ he would be running if Trump was not in 2024 race

Massachusetts - President Joe Biden said on Dec 5 that he might have skipped mounting a 2024 re-election bid if he were not facing Donald Trump because the Republican poses a unique threat to the United States.

“If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running,” he said at a fund-raising event for his 2024 campaign outside of Boston. “We cannot let him win.”

Mr Biden’s striking self-assessment comes as even staunch Democratic voters

expressed concerns about his age.

The Democrat turned 81 years old in November and is already the oldest Oval Office occupant in history.

“Somebody gave him a talking point they thought would sound good,” Trump, who was president from 2017 to 2021, said at a Fox News town-hall event on Dec 5.

Mr Biden, seeking a second four-year term in 2024’s election, later told reporters at the White House that he would not drop out of the race. “No, not now,” he said when asked if he would consider stepping aside if the 77-year-old Trump stopped seeking his own second term.

“Look, he is running, and I have to run.”

When asked if he would have run were Trump not in the race, Mr Biden said, “I expect so.”

During his 2020 presidential campaign, Mr Biden often mentioned that his decision to run was due in part to then President Trump’s handling of issues, including a 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Now, Mr Biden faces limited competition for his party’s nomination and is again positioning Trump as a danger to democracy itself.

Trump, who

faces criminal charges over his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss,

has painted Mr Biden as a dangerous autocrat.

After considering the decision for weeks with family and close confidants, Mr Biden announced his re-election bid in April, coming to the private belief that neither Vice-President Kamala Harris nor any other Democratic hopeful could beat Trump in 2024’s election, according to a former White House official who requested anonymity to discuss the President’s thinking.

Mr Biden’s aides increasingly regard Trump’s front-runner status for the Republican presidential nomination as insurmountable, according to two of those Democrats, who also declined to be named.

Mr Biden has repeatedly made comments about Trump during a fund-raising blitz that started on Dec 5 in Boston and is set to include at least nine events before the end of the month.

“I don’t think anyone doubts our democracy is at risk again,” he said earlier on Dec 5.

Recent polling has shown the Republican front runner leading Mr Biden in hypothetical match-ups in key swing states and at the national level. REUTERS