President Joe Biden went after his old 2020 rival on Wednesday as Donald Trump attempted to make his case for a third presidential bid at a CNN town hall.
Mr Biden joined with others commenting on the ex-president’s combative performance, and asked whether Americans were really ready for another four years with a brash mudslinger in the White House.
His remark came as Mr Trump mocked his CNN moderator Kaitlan Collins as a “nasty” person while spreading his usual lies about the 2020 election and his efforts to overturn the results.
“It’s simple, folks. Do you want four more years of that?” Mr Biden asked.
Mr Biden announced his own re-election campaign last month; if elected to serve another four years in office, he would be 86 by the time his term ended, thus making him the oldest president to ever serve.
Polls of the president’s approval rating have shown his base of supporters shrinking over the past several months, and in some Mr Biden trails his potential 2024 GOP challengers Donald Trump or Florida Governor Ron DeSantis by several percentage points.
Still, the president remains adamant that he is the best choice for his party’s nominee in 2024 even as wide swaths of the Democratic Party, according to polling, would prefer that he step aside.
Mr Biden has pointed to his party’s successful defence of the Senate in last year’s midterm elections as evidence of his own political strength, though the actual dynamics of the congressional and statewide contests are thought to have been affected more by the constant claims of election fraud by Trump-backed candidates and the recent overturn of Roe vs Wade by the Supreme Court.
Mr Trump spent the bulk of his time at the CNN town hall on Wednesday repeating those same lies and refusing to take accountability for the attack on the US Capitol, even falsely claiming to have offered thousands of troops when in fact no order to deploy was issued.
