At a press conference with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday, President Joe Biden faced questions about his 2024 campaign — including whether he can once again defeat former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP nomination.
“I may not be the only one” who can beat Trump, Biden said at the event, which took place one day after the president announced his reelection campaign. “But I know him well, and I know the danger he presents to our democracy, and we’ve been down this road before.”
Defense of American democracy was central to Biden’s reelection announcement on Tuesday — the president said in a release that next year’s election “is a generational moment for Americans across the country to stand up and fight for our democracy and freedoms,” and said in the video announcing his campaign that the “fight for our democracy” has “been the work of my first term.”
“Every generation of Americans has faced a moment when they've had to defend democracy, stand up for our personal freedoms, and stand up for our right to vote and our civil rights,” Biden said toward the end of his video announcement.
Such a message was also central to his closing argument in last year’s midterms, saying in one particularly noteworthy speech in Philadelphia: “For a long time, we’ve told ourselves that American democracy is guaranteed, but it’s not. We have to defend it, protect it, stand up for it — each and every one of us.”
When asked if Trump’s decision to run impacted Biden’s choice to seek reelection, Biden said that he “still would be running if he wasn’t.”
“I do know him well,” Biden said, before joking: “He’s not hard to know, you know. You know him well, too.”
“There’s more to finish the job,” Biden continued. “We have an opportunity to put ourselves in a position where we are economically and politically secure for a long time.”
“There's still a contest between autocracies and democracies, and we're the leading democracy in the world,” Biden added. “And it's something I know a fair amount about, something I care about and something that I have found a willingness of awful lot of our allies and friends to follow … we have to finish the job, nail it down.”
He also faced questions about his age — Biden, 80, is already the country’s oldest president — and polling showing that 70% of Americans don’t want him to run again. (The same survey, from NBC News, showed that 60% of Americans don’t want Trump to run again, and that 88% of Democratic voters will likely or definitely back Biden again.)
Regarding the polling, Biden said that voters will consider his track record — including job creation and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic recession, as well as advancements in economic growth and addressing the climate crisis.
“The reason I'm running again is there’s a job to finish,” Biden said, adding: “Think about what I inherited, when I got elected. I inherited a nation and overwhelming debt at the time … and for the four years that [Trump] was president, I inherited a nation that had a serious loss of credibility around the world as ‘America First.’
“With regard to age, I can't even say, I guess, how old I am,” Biden joked. "I can't even say the number, it doesn't register with me.”
“The only thing I can say is that one of the things that people are gonna find out, they're gonna see the race, and they're gonna judge whether or not I have it or don't have it,” Biden said. “I respect them taking a hard look at it. I take a hard look at as well. I took a hard look at it before I decided to run and I feel good. I feel excited about the prospects. And I think we're on the verge of really turning the corner in a way we haven't in a long time. “
“I know you're tired of hearing me say say we're at an inflection point, but we really are,” he continued. "What happens in the next two, three, four years is going determine what the next three, four decades look like, and I have never been more optimistic in my life about the prospects of the United States.”