President Joe Biden said Donald Trump looks destined to be the Republican party’s 2024 nominee at a campaign fundraiser in New York, framing a potential rematch as a battle for the future of democracy.
(Bloomberg) — President Joe Biden said Donald Trump looks destined to be the Republican party’s 2024 nominee at a campaign fundraiser in New York, framing a potential rematch as a battle for the future of democracy.
“He may be the nominee again. It looks like he is destined to be the nominee again,” Biden said of the former president and Republican party frontrunner on Wednesday.
“I need you. I need every American who loves democracy to join together in 2024. If we do that we have done something few of us have ever done, that is save American democracy,” Biden added. “Imagine what — if he does anything that he says he’s going to do, where will we be? Where will we be?”
Biden has regularly highlighted what he says are persistent threats to US democratic institutions from Trump and his supporters. Following Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election, the Republican claimed without evidence that the contest was rigged and his supporters attempted to disrupt certification of Biden’s victory in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
Voters in Iowa, the first state in the Republican calendar, will not caucus for four months, but polls already show Trump with a sizable lead over the rest of the GOP field. The RealClearPolitics average of national polls has him up by over 46 percentage points over his nearest challenger, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Biden’s comments are the latest sign of how the two candidates are increasingly pivoting toward a potential general election matchup.
Trump has declined to take the stage at Republican debates and focused his attacks more on Biden, casting himself as the de facto GOP nominee. Biden has hammered at Trump, using a Labor Day address earlier this month to contrast his economic policies with his predecessor’s agenda.
Biden’s comments came at a fundraiser hosted by food security expert Amy Goldman Fowler. The fundraiser is one of four donor events Biden is headlining in New York this week during his visit to the United Nations General Assembly, part of a money-raising blitz ahead of a Sept. 30 campaign reporting deadline.
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