Biden: I'd Be 'Very Fortunate' If Trump Runs Again
While speaking to reporters at a NATO event Thursday, President Joe Biden said he would be "very fortunate" if former President Donald Trump runs against him again in the 2024 presidential election.
"In the next election I'd be very fortunate if I had that same man running against me," Biden said at a news conference from NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
Biden's remark comes as he faces public approval ratings hovering at 40% and also as Trump has hinted that he will likely seek the Republican nomination in 2024.
A reporter at the NATO event told Biden, "There are widespread concerns in Europe that a figure like your predecessor might get elected president again."
The reporter then asked if there were "any steps, anything you're trying to do, and NATO is trying to do" to prevent Trump from repealing the alliance's initiatives.
Biden answered that he wasn't planning to run for president after leaving office as vice president in 2017, but changed his mind later that year when he saw protesters at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, "carrying torches and carrying Nazi banners."
"And the gentleman you mentioned was asked what he thought and he said there are very good people on both sides," Biden said. "And that's when I decided I wasn't going to be quiet."
In the 2020 election, Biden defeated Trump by more than 4 percentage points in the popular vote, and by 74 Electoral College votes, according to CNBC.
For more than a year, Trump has claimed that he, not Biden, won the 2020 election, arguing that Biden's victory was due to election fraud.
Courts dismissed dozens of lawsuits brought by Trump and his supporters that disputed the integrity of the 2020 election.
The House later impeached Trump for a second time for incitement of insurrection after supporters breached the Capitol building while Congress certified Biden's victory on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump was subsequently acquitted by the Senate.
As he hints at another White House run, Trump repeated the claim that he won the last presidential election.
"We've already won two presidential elections," Trump said in a speech to Republican donors in New Orleans two weeks ago.
"And now I feel obligated that we have to really look strongly at doing it again," Trump said. "We are looking at it very, very strongly. We have to do it."
Meanwhile, the Biden administration has faced struggles on multiple fronts, resulting in record low approval ratings and giving Trump a rematch advantage in multiple recent polls.
Many Biden Hurdles
On Biden's watch, inflation has surged, Russia acted to invade Ukraine in spite of sanction threats from the White House, management of the pandemic ran into various administrative hurdles and a new wave of the coronavirus, and key Biden legislative initiatives fell victim to gridlock on Capitol Hill. This, though Biden ran his 2020 campaign on pledges to united a politically divided nation and help promote compromise in Congress.
In a similar vein, illegal immigration at the southern border with Mexico has continued at a rapid pace, prompting strong criticisms from Trump. A cornerstone of the Trump administration, the border wall project, was put on hold under Biden and left unfinished.
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