President Joe Biden stated Monday that he chose to run for reelection, despite his historically low approval ratings, because of “the things that [former President Donald] Trump has said.”
Biden ended 2023 with some of the lowest polling of his three years in office, and he has begun to slide with black, Latino, and young voters heading into the 2024 election. Meanwhile, his support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to bleed support from his 2020 coalition, especially among Arab and Muslim Americans.
The president spent Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, volunteering in Philadelphia, where he recorded an interview that aired at 3 p.m. Eastern time on Dr. Al Sharpton’s radio show.
Biden opened the interview by ticking off the accomplishments he has delivered for the black community, including driving down black unemployment and investing in both rural and urban infrastructure revitalization projects. But when asked to clarify what made him decide to run for reelection, the president turned his focus toward the likely Republican presidential nominee.
“Trump is saying things that are just off the wall, and he’s the most anti-democratic, with a small d, president in American history,” Biden told Sharpton. “The things he’s saying and he means this — he’s talking about he’s running to get revenge on people. He’s running because he wants to see — it’s just outrageous things.”
Biden pointed to comments made by Trump last week in which he hoped an economic crash would happen in the “next 12 months because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover.”
“He said the other day that because our economy is doing so well and getting better and better, he said he’s looking forward to a recession or a depression because he does not want — he wants it to happen ‘on my watch,’” the president said. “He wouldn’t be talking about this if he didn’t acknowledge that the economy is doing pretty damn well, particularly for people who, in fact, need the most help.”
In 2024, the president appears to have taken the advice of numerous Democratic strategists, lawmakers, and activists and has begun solely focusing his reelection effort on the threats Trump poses to America’s democracy.
Yet Biden has shied away from outright stating that Trump is the only reason he is running for reelection.
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On Dec. 6, the president backtracked comments made at a closed-door fundraiser the day prior about how he wasn’t “sure” he’d have sought another term if Trump wasn’t also vying for the presidency in 2024.
“I expect so,” he told reporters at the White House when asked if he wouldn’t be running if Trump weren’t in the race. “But look, he is running, and I have to run.”