(Washington) Donald Trump is a “real danger” to the United States, Joe Biden said in an interview broadcast on Sunday, the first since he gave up on a second term, with the president pledging to do everything he can to ensure that his vice-president Kamala Harris succeeds him.
“If he wins […] this election […] “He’s dangerous. He’s a real danger to the security of America,” the 81-year-old Democratic leader, who was replaced at short notice by Mr.me Harris as the Democratic Party candidate.
“We are at a turning point. We really are there […] and democracy is the key element,” Biden added in this interview recorded several days ago at the White House and in which he appears in better shape than during his disastrous debate on June 27 live on CNN against Donald Trump, the former Republican president (2017-2021) who is 78 years old and is running again.
PHOTO RICK BOWMER, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Donald Trump
“I was having a really, really bad day during that debate because I was sick, but I don’t have any serious problems,” he assured the CBS reporter who asked about his health.
“Say how old I am”
But Joe Biden has half-heartedly acknowledged that his age weighed heavily in his decision to withdraw from the campaign to make way for a 59-year-old woman.
“I can barely tell how old I am […] “I have trouble getting it out of my mouth,” admitted the octogenarian, who increasingly searches for words and whose weak, hoarse voice is sometimes difficult to understand.
It was three weeks after this calamitous televised debate against Mr. Trump, a tradition of presidential campaigns in the United States, that Mr. Biden announced on July 21 that he was giving up running in the November 5 election.
Mme Harris, who immediately entered the race, is assured of being nominated by the Democratic Party convention in Chicago from August 19 to 22, with her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
PHOTO KEVIN MOHATT, REUTERS
Tim Walz and Kamala Harris
Joe Biden also explained that Democratic members of Congress had expressed serious concerns about their chances of being re-elected in the partial legislative elections that will also be held on November 5.
“A number of my Democratic colleagues in the House [des représentants] and the Senate thought I was going to harm them,” he said.
“Obligation to the country”
“The crucial question for me remains – and this is not a joke – to preserve democracy,” hammered this veteran of politics for half a century. He had run in 2020 against then-President Donald Trump precisely because democracy was, according to him, “at stake,” he recalled.
The Republican camp regularly criticizes these accusations by Democrats against Donald Trump. The latter promised this week a “peaceful transfer” of power after the election, while his departure from the White House was made in the chaos of the storming of the Capitol by his supporters in January 2021.
“I have an obligation to the country to do the most important thing that we can: we must, we must defeat Trump,” Biden said, promising to campaign on the Harris/Walz Democratic ticket, which has momentum within the Party and among Democratic voters.
New polls published on Saturday show Kamala Harris winning against Donald Trump in three key states that could decide the fate of the election, reversing the trend of recent months, at a time when the Republican campaign is struggling.