Biden ‘not sure’ he would be running if Trump wasn’t

Washington: US President Joe Biden said he may have skipped a re-election bid if he were not facing Donald Trump, adding that the Republican posed a unique threat to the country.

“If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running,” Biden said at a fundraising event for his 2024 campaign outside of Boston, on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT). “We cannot let him win.”

US President Joe Biden waves as he walks to Marine One to depart the South Lawn.Credit: AP

Biden’s remarks come as even staunch Democratic voters have expressed concerns about the president’s age. He turned 81 last month.

His aides increasingly think Trump will cement his status as a frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in coming weeks, according to two of them.

During his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden often mentioned that his decision to run was due in part to Trump’s handling of issues as president, including a 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, about which he said: “There are fine people on both sides.”

Some want to avoid this rematch: US President Joe Biden and former US president Donald Trump.Credit: AP/Getty

Now, Biden’s campaign is again positioning Trump as a danger to democracy itself.

Trump, who faces criminal charges over his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss, has painted Biden as a dangerous autocrat.

Biden announced his re-election bid in April, after coming to the private belief that neither Vice President Kamala Harris nor any other Democratic hopeful could beat Trump in next year’s general election, according to a former White House official.

Biden has repeatedly made comments about Trump during a fundraising blitz that started on Tuesday in Boston and is set to include at least nine events before the end of the month.

Recent polling has shown the Republican frontrunner leading Biden in hypothetical match-ups in key swing states and on the national level.

“I don’t think anyone doubts our democracy is at risk again,” Biden said earlier on Tuesday.

Funds for RFK jnr

Campaign funds are flowing across the political spectrum in the US as backers with deep pockets seek to shape the 2024 presidential election.

American Values 2024, a fundraising “Super PAC” supporting third-party presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy jnr, said it planned to spend up to $US15 million ($22 million) getting him on the ballot in 10 states important to winning the 2024 race.

Robert F. Kennedy jnr, son of former US Senator Robert F. Kennedy.Credit: Bloomberg

AV24, as the Super PAC calls itself, will spend money to collect signatures by hand for Kennedy’s campaign – as state law requires – in Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, New York, and Texas, which it says represent approximately half of the signatures nationwide that Kennedy needs to get on the ballot in November.

AV24 was on track to raise nearly $US30 million after Kennedy, son of the Democratic senator who was assassinated in 1968, said in October he would run as an independent, AV24 co-founder Tony Lyons told Reuters.

Millions of dollars have come from a former donor to Trump, Timothy Mellon.

While Kennedy is believed to have cross-party appeal, has raised millions of dollars and is faring at levels not seen by a third-party candidate since the early 1990s in opinion polls, none of it matters if he can’t get on state ballots – a cumbersome process made deliberately difficult by the Republican and Democratic parties over the years.

“We have chosen to pursue these critical states, some of them battlegrounds, due to the complexity of the state election codes and the volume of signatures necessary to achieve ballot access,” said Deirdre Golffard, who advises the Super PAC.

Nikki Haley speaks during the second Republican presidential primary debate in September.Credit: AP

The effort to support Kennedy comes as one left-leaning billionaire donated to a Republican Trump rival.

LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman gave $US250,000 to a super political action committee supporting Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, according to an adviser for the LinkedIn co-founder.

Hoffman joins several other billionaires who have historically donated to Democrats, including JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon and investor Bill Ackman, who have expressed support for the former South Carolina governor in recent weeks.

Dmitri Mehlhorn, who advises Hoffman on politics, confirmed the donation, which was first reported by the New York Times.

Haley, a former United Nations ambassador, has gained support in recent weeks from major donors looking for a Republican alternative to former president Trump, who currently leads the field by a wide margin.

Hoffman’s political team inquired if the super PAC, SFA Fund, would accept money from them, given Hoffman’s affiliation with Democrats and his ongoing support for Biden, Mehlhorn said in a statement.

The group said it did not have a problem with the donation and is open to building a wide coalition, he added.

Hoffman was the 25th biggest donor in the 2020 election cycle, giving $US14.6 million, according to OpenSecrets, all in support of Democratic candidates.

This cycle, he’s given $US759,600 to the Biden Victory Fund, which raises money for the president’s campaign, the Democratic National Committee and state parties. He’s also given $US4 million to the Republican Accountability PAC, which has aired ads in Iowa urging voters to turn away from Trump.

US President Joe Biden’s popularity was near its lowest level of his presidency this month, a sign of the challenges ahead for his re-election bid next year, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.

The three-day opinion poll, which closed on Sunday, showed 40 per cent of respondents approved of Biden’s performance as president, a marginal increase from 39 per cent in November. The poll had a margin of error of about three percentage points.

Biden is widely expected to face a November 2024 rematch with Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. Other recent polls have pointed to a potentially close race between the two.

Reuters, Bloomberg

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