President Joe Biden’s “cheat sheet” may have gotten all the press, but amid the media frenzy surrounding his 1st press conference, he spilled a major bombshell to the American people that very few are talking about.
He’s running for a second term despite questions over his age and health.
“My plan is to run for reelection,” he said. “That’s my expectation.”
But he got testy when asked if he might end up locked in a heated rematch with former President Donald Trump.
“Oh, come one,” he said, then taking a dig at the GOP: “I have no idea if there will even be a Republican Party. Do you?”
Biden, the oldest U.S. president ever, turns 79 this year – and his age alone had many on both sides of the aisle operating under the belief he’d serve a single term, if he made it that far.
“If Biden is elected, he’s going to be 82 years old in four years and he won’t be running for reelection,” an advisor once told POLITICO in 2019.
Even Biden himself had previously hinted that he would be a one-and-done president.
“Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” Biden said in 2020. “There’s an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country.”
But apparently he’s changed his tune.
While Biden insiders insist he is healthy, questions about both his physical and cognitive fitness have dogged him throughout the 2020 campaign and followed him into the White House. Just last week, he stumbled several times as he attempted to climb the stairs to Air Force One.
Aides blamed windy conditions… but critics aren’t buying it.
“Do you believe the lie that ― and I think it’s a lie ― that Joe Biden was pushed to the ground by a gust of wind three times?” Fox News host Sean Hannity asked during his radio show. “Because I don’t think there’s ever been a bigger lie told from that podium.”
Hannity has been among a number of figures who’ve openly raised questions about Biden’s health.
“I see dramatic, significant decline,” Hannity said on the air recently. “He looks weak, frail, and obviously he’s struggling cognitively.”
New York Post columnist Miranda Devine made a similar observation.
“He loses his train of thought. He stumbles over words,” Devine said during a recent TV interview. “He just doesn’t seem to comprehend what he’s reading.”
Until this week, Biden had gone longer than any other modern president without holding a news conference, leading to speculation the White House was trying to protect him from having to speak off the cuff.
When he finally had that press conference, he passed on Fox News and others who might hit him with tough questions and chose reporters more likely to lob softballs.
He answered questions from only 10 reporters… and often read from notes.
“Covering Ronald Reagan for six years I never saw that,” Fox News anchor Chris Wallace noted. “Watching a lot of news conferences over a lot of years, I’ve never seen that … a president in a news conference reading talking points.”
Biden’s apparent plans to seek a second term aren’t just alarming to his critics.
The move is also unlikely to please the growing radical wing of the party, where firebrand figures such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., backed him only grudgingly.
When asked during last year’s primaries about the possibility of Biden winning, Ocasio-Cortez practically groaned.
“Oh God,” she told New York Magazine. “In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are.”
The left sees Biden as far too moderate – and wants a more radical figure. And that means something else could happen in 2024: a sitting president could face a serious reelection challenge… from within his own party.
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert.