A trip with a very personal dimension, concluded on a campaign tune: Joe Biden, visibly reinvigorated after a few days in Ireland, promised to announce “soon” his decision concerning a new candidacy in 2024.
“I have already made this calculation. We will announce it relatively soon. But this trip has only reinforced my sense of optimism about what can be done, ”the American president told reporters who asked him about a candidacy.
“I told you that my plan was to represent me,” he added, from Knock Regional Airport in the west of Ireland.
For several months now, America has wondered less if Joe Biden will start, despite his age, but rather when he will formalize his entry into the campaign.
The 80-year-old Democrat therefore further fueled expectations, before flying to Dublin, where he will stop over before returning to the United States, concluding a journey that began on Tuesday in Belfast and which then took him above all on the traces of his ancestors in Ireland.
muscle rock
Shortly before, he had concluded the visit with an energetic speech in the small town of Ballin, arriving to the cheers of 27,000 spectators to the tune of muscular Celtic rock.
He extolled in these terms the shared values of Ireland and the United States: “We are fighting for freedom, democracy”.
Did Joe Biden have in mind that at the exact same time, on the other side of the Atlantic, the one he may face again in 2024, Donald Trump, was addressing the powerful arms lobby, the NRA?
In any case, his speech had very political overtones.
“Even in times of darkness and despair, hope has kept us moving forward into a brighter future of greater freedom, greater dignity, greater opportunity,” he said. the Democrat, taking up his favorite argument there.
“Now is the time to rededicate our minds, our hearts and our souls to the cause of progress, to lay the foundations, brick by brick, of a better future for our children,” said Joe Biden.
” My soul “
This speech also had a more intimate note.
“It’s like coming home, really. Over the years, the stories here have become a part of my soul,” the US president said as he said goodbye to Ireland.
His visit had taken a very personal turn, during a visit to the sanctuary of Our Lady of Knock, earlier in the day.
The American president, the only other Catholic to have conquered the White House with John Fitzgerald Kennedy, had planned to gather there in private.
He also unexpectedly met a former US Army chaplain who administered the last rites to his son Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015, said the priest of the shrine, the father Richard Gibbons, at the BBC.
Tears
“The president was crying, it really touched him, and we prayed for his family,” said the priest.
The Democrat, accompanied by his other son, Hunter, and his sister Valerie, had come in the footsteps of his maternal ancestors, who emigrated in the mid-19th century.
When he said Thursday in Dublin that he “didn’t want to go back anymore”, it was to wonder if he was really joking, so much Joe Biden gave free rein to his attachment to Ireland.
Joe Biden, who had started with a quick visit to Belfast, had indeed mentioned serious subjects: the blocking of institutions in Northern Ireland, the war in Ukraine…
But the Democrat also offered himself a parenthesis.
He took all his time to chat, shake hands and take selfies, in a warm atmosphere that he will not find in the United States, a country violently divided politically, and where he is hardly popular.
“You are the most Irish of American presidents, not because of your family tree, but by your soul,” Prime Minister Leo Varadkar assured him on Friday, by way of farewell.