President Joe Biden has told a group of Democratic donors on Tuesday that he might not have decided to stand for re-election at 81 years of age if former president Donald Trump wasn’t seeking to reclaim the presidency in next year’s general election.
Mr Biden, the oldest person to ever serve as America’s chief executive, is looking to be elected to serve another four-year term in the White House, which would end when he is 86 years old. He announced his candidacy for re-election in April, approximately six months after Mr Trump launched his campaign for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination against the man he lost to three years ago.
The 46th president’s advanced age has led a small number of Democrats to call for him to stand aside in favour of a younger, presumably more vigorous candidate who, in his critics’ telling, would easily best Mr Trump.
But while speaking at a fundraiser outside Boston on Tuesday, Mr Biden said Mr Trump’s persistence on the political scene is why he is not stepping aside in favour of a new generation.
“If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running. But we cannot let him win,” he said.
Mr Biden currently trails his twice-impeached, indicted predecessor in most opinion polls, with key voting blocs from his winning 2020 coalition dropping their support for him amid his strong backing of Israel during its’ two-month-old war against Hamas.
