Biden says: ‘I’m not sure I would run’ if it weren’t for Trump

President Biden suggested Tuesday that he might have been satisfied with just one term if his predecessor, former President Donald J. Trump, had not tried to retake the White House.

At a campaign fundraiser in the Boston area, Mr. Biden laid out his decision to run for re-election, largely motivated by his determination to defeat Mr. Trump a second time and prevent him from returning to power. Mr. Biden has sometimes portrayed a second term for Mr. Trump as an existential threat to American democracy.

“If Trump didn’t run, I’m not sure I would,” he told donors in Weston, Massachusetts, home of Alan Solomont, a longtime Democratic financier who served as ambassador to Spain. “But we can’t let him win.”

The president’s comment came as polls show most Democrats would prefer someone other than Mr. Biden, who turned 81 last month, to represent the party in next year’s election. A CNN investigation found in August that 67 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents wanted another candidate, and 70 percent cited Mr. Biden’s age, health, mental competency or ability to do the job as their top concern about him.

Although he described himself during his 2020 campaign as “a bridge” to the next generation, a comment that some interpreted as a hint that he would serve only one term, Mr. Biden has concluded that he is best positioned to to defeat Mr Trump again. , which justifies a re-election campaign. He faces only long-term challengers in the Democratic primaries in Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota and Marianne Williamson, the author.

Mr. Trump, who is 77 and has shown his own cognitive problems of late, has outpaced his rivals for the Republican nomination by double digits in the polls and appears poised to steam into his third general election. That’s despite four criminal charges on 91 felonies for illegal attempts to overturn an election, endangering national security and other charges. Despite his political liability, surveys show that he is either allied with Mr. Biden or has a slight lead, both nationally and in the battleground states that will decide the Electoral College.

After two months largely preoccupied with the war in the Middle East, Biden returns to the campaign trail this week with three fundraisers in the Boston area on Tuesday and a three-day trip to Nevada and California this weekend. Aides have dismissed concerns from concerned Democrats, saying that once the choice is clear, wavering Democratic and independent voters will return to Biden, even if they worry about his age, rather than returning Trump to power deliver.

The president attacked Trump on Tuesday for a radical agenda if he returns to office. Mr. Trump and his allies have discussed, among other things, prosecuting political enemies and former Trump aides who criticized him; eliminating civil service protections for many government officials to make them more personally loyal to him; setting up detention camps for illegal immigrants; scaling back the obligations under the NATO treaty; and sending the army into the streets to suppress the protests.

“Trump isn’t even hiding the ball anymore,” Biden said at another fundraiser on Tuesday. ‘He tells us what he’s going to do. He doesn’t make a big deal about it.”

Mr. Biden noted that Mr. Trump has vowed “retaliation” against perceived enemies, pledged to repeal the Affordable Care Act, supported further restrictions on abortion and threatened to eradicate “pests” from Washington in language that the president compared to that used in Washington. Germany in the 1930s during the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

“He didn’t even show up for my inauguration,” the president noted. “I can’t say I was disappointed, but he didn’t even show up.” Mr. Biden added that he received 81 million votes in 2020 — “almost as old as anyone’s age. It’s hell to turn 40 twice.”