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BLITZ BUREAU

US President Joe Biden has said he is “determined” and “fit” to seek re-election against his Republican rival Donald Trump and a “stupid mistake” by him will not change his course as he has work to finish.

At a fiery news conference on the final day of the NATO summit in Washington DC on July 11, he sought to dispel concerns about his age and continued ability to lead. “I’ve got to finish this job because there’s so much at stake,” said Biden, who misspoke on several occasions during the press conference. (See box) “I’m determined on running,” he insisted. “The fact is that the consideration is that I think I’m the most qualified person to run for President. I beat him (Trump) once and I will beat him again,” he said.

Economic progress

“I got more work to do. We’ve got more work to finish. We made so much progress. Think about where we are economically relative to the rest of the world. Name me a world leader who wouldn’t want to trade places with our economy. We created over 800,000 manufacturing jobs, so things are moving. We’ve got more to go,” the President said. “Working class people still need help. Corporate greed is still at large. Corporate profits have doubled since the pandemic. They’re coming down and so I’m optimistic about where things are going,” he asserted.

Biden added that he is seeking his reelection not for his legacy. “I’m in this to complete the job I started. As you recall, understandably, many of you and many economists thought my initial initiatives that I put forward can’t do that because it’s going to cause inflation. Things are going to skyrocket. The debt’s going to go up. What are you hearing now from mainstream economists?”

“Sixteen economic Nobel laureates said I’ve done a hell of a job, that under my plan so far and what’s going to happen in the future, if I’m reelected, that things are going to get much better. Our economy is growing. I was determined when I got elected to stop the trickle down economic theory that if the wealthy did very well, everybody else would do well,” the President said.

Anti-Russia tirade

The 81-year-old President said he has “no good reason” to talk to Vladimir Putin at the moment unless the Russian leader changes his behaviour. “I have no good reason to talk to Putin right now. There’s not much that he is prepared to do in terms of accommodating any change in his behaviour, but there isn’t any world leader I’m not prepared to deal with,” he said.

“First of all, in this war that he supposedly has won, and by the way, I think, don’t hold me to the exact number, but I think that Russia had 17.3 per cent of Ukraine that they’ve conquered, now it’s 17.4. I mean, in terms of percentage of territory,” he said.

“They’ve not been very successful. They’ve caused horrible damage, and loss of life, but they’ve also lost over 350,000 troops, military, killed or wounded. They have over a million people, particularly young people with technical capability leaving Russia because they see no future there. They’ve got a problem,” said the President.