President Joe Biden is opening up a bit about his motivation for running for re-election.
Fox News reported Tuesday that Biden told donors, “If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running.”
“But we cannot let him win,” he reportedly added.
Watch the video below:
.@JacquiHeinrich reports that Biden told donors "If Trump wasn't running, I'm not sure I'd be running, but we cannot let him win." pic.twitter.com/v1RlfsZIc2
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) December 6, 2023
While he was returning to the White House, a reporter asked the president, “Would you be running for president if Trump wasn’t running?”
“I expect so. But look, he is running and I have to run,” Biden responded.
He was then asked a major question, “Would you drop out if Trump drops out?”
“No,” Biden responded before adding clarifying two words, “Not now.”
Joe Biden confirms he will not drop out of the presidential race now, even if Donald Trump does.
— Sky News (@SkyNews) December 6, 2023
Latest US news? https://t.co/0lvqhinKxM pic.twitter.com/NbhZlUlstP
Now, you may have noticed that was a bit of a walkback from his initial statement. But there was still plenty of hedging there. He would “expect” he would be running if Trump wasn’t, not a definitive yes. And there was not a definitive “no” when asked about dropping, it was “not now,” which seems to suggest there’s a possibility he could.
Why Biden decided to open his mouth and say such things is unclear. But they offer a confirmation of what we’ve all been thinking: that he is too old to run for office again, he would be 86 at the end of a potential second term, and he doesn’t really want to run again.
Those aren’t the words of someone confident about the future and his ability to serve out another term successfully.
These are the words of someone who gets a job and is mediocre at it, but the power brokers tell them if he leaves, everything will go down the drain because they haven’t found a good replacement and those eager to step up would be worse, so he has to stay and be tortured by a job he’s not really into.
Perhaps he was just tired and daunted by the thought of having to stay up past 5 p.m. for five more years.
But it seems he is waking up to the reality everyone has been seeing, he is just not up to the job. And it raises the question of how big is Biden’s ego that he believes that he — who has overseen soaring prices and chaos on the world stage while anti-semitism is on the rise domestically and abroad — is the only person who can beat former President Donald Trump?
And running against one individual is not a rousing message with all the hardships Americans are facing. Ironically, it runs against his message of empathy, decency, and compassion: Americans have to keep on suffering because I think the orange man is bad.
Very compassionate, Joe.
Indeed, it also runs contrary to those messages in that we now have anti-semitic mobs harassing Jewish people and accusing them of genocide at an exponential rate than under Trump — which allegedly inspired Biden to run in the first place.
