Joe Biden arrives in Brussels for the NATO and G7 summit.
Brussels:
President Joe Biden on Thursday said he would be happy if his 2024 reelection bid turns out to be a 2020 reelection bid with Donald Trump.
In “the next election, I’ll be very lucky if I have that very man against me,” Biden told reporters while attending NATO and G7 summits in Brussels.
Biden rarely talks about his prospects for a second term and there has been much speculation that he will not run. He will be 81 years old at the election and 86 years old at the end of his presidency, if re-elected.
However, when asked at a news conference about the prospect that someone like Trump could replace him in two years, Biden pointed out that this is exactly the scenario that drives him to stay in office.
Trump, who lost in 2020 after just one term, has been campaigning ever since with the lie that he won and has made no secret that he wants to return to the White House.
Biden was referring to last year’s January 6 riots by Trump supporters storming Congress after the defeated president told them the election was stolen.
Biden also addressed what he often calls the reason he retired to the 2020 race in the first place – a 2017 white protest and anti-government rally in Virginia, where One protester was killed and Trump said there were “very nice people on both sides.”
“I’m not going to run again,” Biden said. But after Trump’s remarks, “I’ve decided I won’t be silent anymore.”
Biden is languishing in the polls as decades-high inflation affects his job approvals and promises to heal severe political polarization in the United States have faded.
His Democrats face an uphill struggle for control of Congress in this November’s midterm elections.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
