A defiant US President Joe Biden has insisted that he is “determined” and fit to seek re-election and defeat his Republican rival Donald Trump in November, even as two excruciating gaffes marred his efforts to dismiss concerns over his age and fitness.
During a high-stakes solo news conference on Thursday at the conclusion of the NATO Summit here, Biden said that no poll or person is telling him that he can't win reelection currently. That is the only way he would consider ending his presidential bid.
“I'm determined to run,” 81-year-old Biden, the oldest sitting US President, said.
“The fact is that the consideration is that I think I'm the most qualified person to run for president. I beat him (Trump) once, and I will beat him again. Secondly.. The idea that senators and congressmen are running for office worrying about the ticket is not unusual and I might add, there were at least five presidents running or incumbent presidents who had lower numbers than I have now later in a campaign,” Biden said.
“So there's a long way to go in this campaign, and so I'm just going to keep moving, keep moving,” he said.
Toward the beginning of the question-and-answer session, Biden mistakenly referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as former President Trump amid mounting questions surrounding his mental acuity.
He said Harris was qualified to be president as well, although he misnamed her in the endorsement.
“I wouldn't have picked vice-president Trump to be vice-president if she's not qualified to be president,” Biden said.
He made a similar mistake earlier in the day, accidentally calling Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky “President Putin” while introducing him during a NATO event. He continued to defy the pleas from a growing number of Democrats to step down from the Democratic ticket.
Asked if he was determined to stay in the race despite the fears of some Democratic lawmakers, Biden said, “I'm determined on running, but I think it's important that I realise allay fears by seeing - let them see me out there. Let them see me out.”
He said his campaign was strong and working hard in “toss-up states.”
"..Look, I got more work to do. We've got more work to finish. We made so much progress. Think about where we are economically relative to the rest of the world. Name me a world leader who wouldn't want to trade places with our economy. We created over 800,000 manufacturing jobs, …so things are moving. We've got more to go,” the president said.
“Working-class people still need help. Corporate greed is still at large. Corporate profits have doubled since the pandemic. They're coming down and so I'm optimistic about where things are going,” he asserted.
Biden added that he is seeking his re-election not for his legacy.
“I'm in this to complete the job I started. As you recall, understandably, many of you and many economists thought my initial initiatives that I put forward can't do that because it's going to cause inflation. Things are going to skyrocket. The debt's going to go up. What are you hearing now from mainstream economists?”
“Sixteen economic Nobel laureates said I've done a hell of a job, that under my plan so far and what's going to happen in the future if I'm reelected, that things are going to get much better. Our economy is growing. I was determined when I got elected to stop the trickle-down economic theory that if the wealthy did very well, everybody else would do well,” the president said.
Biden refuted reports that he told his aides that he needed to go to bed earlier and end meetings around eight in the evening.
“That's not true… what I said was, instead of my every day starting at seven and going to bed at midnight, it'd be smarter for me to pace myself a little more. And I said, for example, the 8:00, 7:00, 6:00 stuff, instead of starting the fundraiser at 9:00, start at 8:00. People get to go home by 10:00. That's what I'm talking about,” he said.
When asked about what changed his mind when in 2020 he said that he would be the bridge candidacy for a younger, fresher generation of Democratic leaders, Biden said: “What changed was the gravity of the situation I inherited in terms of the economy, our foreign policy and domestic division.”
Biden also offered extensive remarks on thorny foreign policy issues, including competition with China and the Israel-Hamas war.
He said he had warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu away from an occupation of the Gaza Strip.
He said he was directly in contact with Chinese President Xi Jinping to warn him not to offer further support for Russia's war in Ukraine, but not with Vladimir Putin, whom he said: “I have no reason to speak to him right now.”
Biden said he was totally opposed to the occupation and trying to unite Afghanistan. He said that the US should have left the country after killing Osama bin Laden.
“There's no need to occupy anywhere. Go after the people who did the job. You may recall I still get criticized for it, but I was totally opposed to the occupation and trying to unite Afghanistan,” he told reporters at a news conference.
“Once we got bin Laden, we should have moved on because it was not in our -- and no one's ever going to unite that country,” he said.
“I've been over every inch of that -- not every inch, the entirety from the poppy fields all the way to the north. I said don't make the same mistake we made. Don't think that's what you should be doing is doubling down,” he said.
Meanwhile, three House Democrats -- Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, Scott Peters of California and Eric Sorensen of Illinois -- on Thursday joined others to call on President Biden to step aside from the 2024 race following the news conference. Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, argued that Biden should make the decision to suspend his campaign to not risk his legacy.
Trump, who is seeking his second term, also mocked Biden.
“Crooked Joe begins his ‘Big Boy' Press Conference with, ‘I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president, though I think she was not qualified to be president,” Trump, 78, posted on his social media platform Truth Social.
