America's Talking - Biden Announces Run For Reelection

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

President Joe Biden announced early Tuesday that he is running for reelection. "Every generation has a moment where they have had to stand up for democracy. To stand up for their fundamental freedoms," Biden wrote on Twitter in his announcement. "I believe this is ours. That’s why I’m running for reelection as President of the United States. Join us. Let’s finish the job." Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to American Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulib, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me today is Casey Harper, the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. We are recording this on Friday, April 28th. Casey, among the big news this week, is President Joe Biden announced he is going to run for a second term. Does that surprise you or anybody else? I don't think it doesn't surprise me. I think Biden is, you know, incumbents almost always run. You know, of course, Biden's age. run into question whether he would or could run again. But I think he's maintained a pretty, he's taken a lot of flack for his mental state. But I wouldn't say that his mental state now is much different from where it was in the campaign. I mean, he's definitely, he's had this, I guess, you know, a steady amount of flubs and embarrassing moments and apparently being unable to, you know, find his way off the stage.

But it's not like things seem like they're getting a lot worse than they were in the campaign. And I guess if Americans were okay with where he was at the first time around, why not the second? Now, Trump was quick to launch a salvo, and that would be, you know, an interesting rematch from 2020. It raises questions about the Hunter Biden investigation that's kind of hanging over on Biden's head. How is that going to play out? Raised questions, are there any Democratic primary challengers going to rise up if that, you know, scandal worsens? Right now, it looks like there's nobody who's going to try to throw in their hat in the ring against an incumbent, you know, member of their own party, which is to be expected. But this is kind of setting the stage for

24. And unless these scandals really, you know, take off, we might have a rematch because right now Trump is far, you know, really pulled ahead of, pulled ahead of DeSantis. So it might be 2020 all over again, then. Yeah, and I'm not sure many voters would be looking forward to that. Let's start with President Biden's age, as you reported at the center square.com. Biden is currently 80 years old. The next election, 2024, he would be 82 years old. So if he were to win re-election and finish out the full four-year second term, he'd be 86. At the end of that term, you mentioned up front sort of the gaffs, the very consistent gaffs from President Biden's stumbling over words. I mean, he's certainly not going to be any better two, four, six years from now when it comes to that.

And there's even been plenty of pushback from Democrats, whether on the record or off the record, saying they don't think Biden should run again. But here he is announced. Candidates that we've talked about on America in focus in the past, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. Of course, Vice President Kamala Harris, who is his presumed running mate in two years. So they'd be out of the picture. How do you think Democrats are swallowing this? Yeah, I think you're right. There's probably some grumbling behind the scenes. Gavin Newsom has definitely shown some real ambition. He's he's a lot younger. He could, you know, theoretically wait for another pass. Vice President Kamala Harris is definitely young enough to wait, you know, for another cycle. But there's also a sense in which you kind of have a moment in politics. And then if you miss that, it may never come around again, right? So you do want to seize your moment. But it's going to take a lot to mount a challenge to an incumbent president who can run for a second term. I mean, it's just going to take something.

something like this Hunter Biden scandal getting to a monumental level or Biden's health getting really decelerating. I mean, God forbid, we don't wish any ill on him. But if his health did begin to really decline, then you would have this moment where an ambitious Democrat like Newsom, I think you're right to bring him up. In my mind, he's top of the list. So even though he may be under the radar for a lot of people who, you know, are following the news every day. But for example, Newsom has really attacked Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and tried to make himself a rival. I think he's trying to elevate his own status in his party by being seen as the counter to DeSantis, who is seen by many is kind of the future for Republicans. But if Biden gets weak enough because of his health or because

of his scandal, then you could see a Democrat try to seize on that weakness and step in and say, for the good of the party, Biden needs to step down. I wish him well with all his health, but he needs to step down and so we can have a new face on the party. You could see something like that happened. But right now, we're not there. I mean, you agree with that assessment, Dan, and I'm curiously if you agree, because there might be some listeners who disagree with me, that his flubs and his mental state has remained consistently bad and not seen a big decline since he took office. Do you agree with that assessment? Absolutely.

I mean, almost every time he makes a public appearance that's caught on camera, there's something that seems just a little bit off. President Trump, of course, who's, you know, after his indictment and arraignment, he's taken off in the polls on the Republican side. Rhonda Sannis, the Florida governor, seemed to be his biggest rival, but Trump's opened. Now, we're still, you know, we're what? It's still 14 months away from the Republican Convention in Milwaukee. So there's plenty of time to go before there's a sure thing Republican nominee. But Trump is seems to be way ahead in the polls. Of course, he went on the attack against Biden as soon as Biden announced, blamed him for, you know, sky high inflation.

American's real wages because of inflation declining every month since he's taken office. He even went so far as to say he was taking a nickname away from Hillary Clinton, crooked Hillary, and now placing it on Joe Biden, Crooked Joe, in part because of the scandal relating to the Biden family business and the Hunter Biden and whatnot. There was also pretty big news this week regarding Hunter Biden. Just tell us briefly about what's going on there. Yeah, this is pretty interesting. And this is kind of what I was alluding to. And I said this scandal could, you know, reach a level where it's not really as manageable.

for Biden or the Biden family. And this test, this testimony showed that the state department and CIA worked together to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story to help Biden win the election. And that might seem like a, you know, right wing editorializing. But it's, it's actually what this witness told how judiciary chair, Jim Jordan, of course, you know, Jordan's a Republican, has his own agenda and everything. But a top intelligence official was basically approached, according to this, you know, this is what he said, the intelligence official former CIA guy approached by the the Biden campaign and asked to create this letter of 51 U.S. intelligence officials discrediting the Hunter Biden laptop story, right? So you remember the story came out? And what we know now is the

FBI warned these social media companies, don't run this story. You need to block this story because this Russian disinformation about Hunter Biden's laptop. So they warned all the social media companies ahead of time like a week or two in advance. It comes out, New York Post writes it, Twitter shuts them down. You know, it's like this big thing. And then immediately all these intelligence officials like have this letter ready. And between social media companies censoring it, all these intelligence officials saying that it's, you know, fake news basically in Russian disinformation. It doesn't totally kill the story, but it creates a large, reasonable doubt that gets through the election. But since that election, we've learned that so many of these details about the laptop were true, news outlets

like the New York Times, which initially called it kind of a conspiracy theory, have since basically backtracked and verified the laptop. And so, you know, they say in D.C. in politics that the cover-up is worse than the crime often, right? And I think we could be in that case here. I mean, the laptop's pretty bad, but getting the CIA and all these intelligence officials and social media companies and federal law enforcement all colluding together to influence the 2020 election, that, you know, that could be worse than just a laptop itself in the minds of voters. The mainstream media back in 2020 also suppressed the story, didn't cover it, didn't give it much attention. And today, still today, despite this very real evidence of a cover-up, they're still

not touching it. So all these conspiracy theories about the mainstream media being in bed with Biden, man, it just looks more and more like that's the case. Yeah, I mean, the evidence is mounting up. And it's gone from kind of a conspiracy to things are just true. I mean, we know the FBI pressured social media companies to censor it. We know now that the CIA worked with the Biden campaign. But in other instances, Trump said he was spied on. Everyone laughed that off. It's silly.

Now we know that was true. So I don't know how many times these kind of things can happen before people start to get upset and realize that there is something going on behind the scenes that's not working in their favor necessarily. Well, for our listeners, strap yourselves down. We might be in for another year plus almost two years of a. 2020 redux, Trump versus Biden. But that's all the time we have. Casey, thank you for your insight. You can keep up with this story and more at thecenter square.com. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McAulip.

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