US President Joe Biden is determined to stay in office for a full second term if reelected, according to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
Biden did so poorly in the TV debate with Republican challenger Donald Trump two weeks ago that dozens of media outlets, prominent Democrats, and major party donors urged him to step aside. The 81-year-old has refused, insisting that he can beat Trump in November.
“Does President Biden commit to serving a full second term if reelected?” Jean-Pierre was asked during the White House briefing on Tuesday.
“Yes,” she replied.
Biden himself told MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on Monday that he was “firmly committed” to winning a second term and that he was “not going anywhere.”
Meanwhile, major donors to the Democrats have been discussing “elegant” ways for Biden to drop out of the race, according to the New York Times, while Nobel Prize winner and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman urged him to give way to Vice President Kamala Harris.
On Tuesday, Politico published a poll showing that Biden would lose the election to Trump, but Hillary Clinton might win. The pollster even said that a Clinton-Harris ticket would be the strongest against Trump, beating the Republican by three percentage points. Clinton has blamed everyone from the FBI to Russia for her loss to Trump in 2016.
Meanwhile, investigative journalist Alex Berenson discovered that a neurologist specializing in Parkinson’s Disease has visited the White House at least eight times since January, pointing to visitor logs as evidence.
Weighing in on the controversy, Trump speculated that Biden would withstand his party’s pressure to drop out.
“It looks to me like he may very well stay in,” Trump said in a phone interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday night. “He’s got an ego and he doesn’t want to quit. This isn’t necessarily a very positive thing for our country, but I think he might very well stay in.”
Biden declined to run in 2016, after serving two terms as Barack Obama’s vice president. The Democrats settled on him in 2020 as the best choice to challenge Trump. In return, Biden agreed to make Harris his running mate and reportedly told people he would not run again in 2024.
Four sources told Politico in December 2019 that it was “virtually inconceivable” that Biden would run again at 82, while one prominent party strategist said it was “a bit crazy” for him to run at all.
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