Defiant Biden to backers: I’m ‘not going anywhere’
United States President Joe Biden on Friday forcefully defied the growing number of critics in his own party who have called on him to exit the race for the White House, pivoting to warnings about a second Donald Trump term and declaring he was “not done yet.”
As a raucous crowd in Detroit chanted “don’t you quit!” and “we got your back!” Biden reiterated that he was still running for reelection and vowed to “shine a spotlight on Donald Trump” and what the Republican would do if he returned to the White House.
The president lambasted an expansive far-right policy agenda crafted by conservative think tanks that his Republican predecessor has scrambled to distance himself from, while ticking off several items on his own wish list for the first 100 days of his second term.
At the same school where, four years ago, then-candidate Biden positioned himself as a bridge to the next generation of Democratic leaders, the embattled president, who has been under pressure for more than two weeks to step aside, made it clear he was going nowhere.
“You made me the nominee, no one else — not the press, not the pundits, not the insiders, not donors,” Biden said to cheers. “You, the voters. You decided. No one else. And I’m not going anywhere.”
The show of force from Biden at the evening rally was part of his team’s relentless sprint to convince fretting lawmakers, nervous donors and a skeptical electorate that, at age 81, he is still capable of being president. But a spate of travel to battleground states, interviews with journalists and a rare solo news conference have not tamped down the angst within the party about Biden’s candidacy and his prospects against Trump in November.
So far, one Democratic senator and roughly 20 House Democrats have publicly called on Biden to step aside. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told Democrats he had met privately with Biden after the news conference, sharing the “full breadth” of views from lawmakers about the path forward in the president’s campaign for reelection.
Earlier on Friday, in a virtual meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Biden was told directly by California Rep. Mike Levin that he should step down as the Democratic nominee, said three people familiar with that call who were granted anonymity to discuss it.
Cheers and jeers
But the support Biden retains among Democrats was clear among the hundreds of supporters at the rally, who waved signs that read “Motown is Joetown” and enthusiastically cheered the president’s remarks — and jeered at any mention of Trump.
“He inherited millions of dollars only to squander it. He’s filed for bankruptcy six times,” Biden said. “He even went bankrupt running a casino. I didn’t think that was even possible. Doesn’t the house always win in a casino?”
He also singled out Project 2025, a massive proposed overhaul of the federal government drafted by longtime allies and former officials in the Trump administration that the businessman-turned-politician has insisted he knows “nothing” of.
“You heard about it? It’s a blueprint for a second Trump term that every American should read and understand,” Biden said, accusing his opponent of trying to run from the plan “just like he’s trying to distance himself from overturning Roe vs. Wade because he knows how toxic it is. But we’re not [going to] let that happen.”
Biden also criticized the media, claiming he was focusing on his errors and not on Trump’s. It prompted his supporters to boo reporters in the room — a staple of Trump rallies — though Biden tried briefly to calm the jeers, saying “no, no, no.”
He smiled, though, when the audience repeatedly chanted “lock him up” in reference to Trump, who was convicted on felony charges in New York relating to his hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels around the 2016 election. Trump frequently encouraged the same chant regarding his political opponents.
The Biden campaign and the White House did not immediately respond when asked if he condoned the chant.
AP
