President Biden inched closer on Friday to formally announcing his re-election campaign, telling reporters that he would do so “relatively soon.”
“No, no, no, no,” he said during a trip to Ireland, when asked whether his “calculus” had changed in recent days on when to make his announcement. “I’ve already made that calculus. We’ll announce it relatively soon. But the trip here just reinforced my sense of optimism about what can be done.”
Asked if that meant he had made a decision, he responded, with a hint of impatience, “I told you, my plan is to run again.”
He had: Four days earlier, speaking to Al Roker of NBC News at an Easter event at the White House, Mr. Biden said, “I plan on running,” adding, “But we’re not prepared to announce it yet.”
Mr. Biden made his latest remarks on Friday at an airport in Ireland, where he has spent part of his week. On Wednesday, he gave a speech in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. Then he traveled to the Republic of Ireland, where he visited his ancestors’ hometown.
Mr. Biden’s 2024 campaign has been a subject of will-he-or-won’t-he debate since the moment he was elected as the oldest president in United States history. He is now 80, and would be 86 by the end of a second term, which has made even some of his fellow Democrats uncomfortable.
But Mr. Biden suggested from the start that he would probably run again.
He has not faced much pressure to imminently announce a formal campaign, though, because there is no sign of a competitive Democratic primary. The self-help author Marianne Williamson is running against Mr. Biden, and the anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has indicated that he will also run, but neither has a large base of support.
And across the aisle, the early weeks of the Republican primary have been consumed by news of former President Donald J. Trump’s mounting legal problems, including his arraignment in New York last week on 34 felony charges related to a hush-money payment to a porn star who said they had sex. That has left little incentive for Mr. Biden to draw attention to himself and away from Republicans’ troubles.
