Did joe biden ever run for president

Friday on Fox Business Network’s “Varney & Company,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) reacted to President Joe Biden blaming Russia for the record-high gas and food prices.

Jordan asserted that “everything costs more because of Joe Biden” and the “Democrats running our government.”

“Well, I mean, he’s wrong like he is on every other issue,” Jordan declared. “I mean, we know why we have inflation. They spent like crazy, they paid people not to work, and they drove up the cost of energy. It wasn’t Russia that did it. It was their crazy policies … that ended the pipeline, their policies that won’t let you drill ANWR, their policies that made it difficult to get leases on federal land, so everything costs more because of Joe Biden.”

He continued, “Food costs more, gas costs more; if you want to buy a new home, it costs more. Everything costs more, and this idea that, you know, somehow, Americans don’t understand. They do. There’s a reason, Ashley, that more than seven out of 10 of our fellow citizens think the country is on the wrong track — because it is under Joe Biden and Democrats running our government, and that’s why I think there’s going to be a big change come this November’s election.”

Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent

The Biden presidency is a disappointment to Americans. That goes for people who voted for him—who thought he’d do a better job—and people who, even as they voted against him, did not believe he could make as much of a hash of things as he has.

The list of problems is long and growing longer. More COVID-19 cases than there were under Donald Trump . Inflation like we haven’t seen since the Carter years. Rapidly rising interest rates. Shortages. The debacle in Afghanistan. War in Ukraine. It’s no wonder a growing majority of Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction.

According to a new Associated Press-NORC survey , 85 percent of American adults—including more than 7 in 10 Democrats—say the country is not on the right track. Almost two-thirds—60 percent—blame the president for that, with just 39 percent of those participating in the survey saying they approve of his overall presidential leadership. As if that were not bad enough, 69 percent of those surveyed, including 43 percent of the Democrats who responded, rated his handling of the economy “poor.”

Democrats need to face facts. If the president’s age is not an argument against his seeking a second term, his poll numbers are. Support for him has dropped to his predecessor’s level. Trump, at least, benefited from a highly motivated, energized bloc of diehard supporters upon whom he could always count. Biden was always a compromise choice about whom no one was truly enthusiastic.

As of now, the president’s numbers are more likely to get worse than they are to get better. It is much easier, as a friend of mine likes to observe, for his approval rating to fall deeper into the 30s than to get back above 50 percent. This is good news for the Republicans , because it makes it increasingly likely the GOP will win back control of one or both congressional chambers in November, all but guaranteeing the Biden agenda, such as it is, will grind to a full stop.

That may not put the Republicans in charge of the government, but it would effectively make Biden a “lame duck.” He won’t be able to get anything major through and won’t have anything on which to campaign for a second term. Recognizing that, GOP leaders need to be extremely strategic in deciding who they want to run in 2024.

The likely choice, most polls say, is Donald Trump. He’d be the easy winner—in a race against Biden. But what if the Democrats nominate someone else? What if Trump decides not to run? What then? It’s a puzzle, and one that’s not easily solved.

Biden has set the bar so low that it would not be too hard to find a better president among the list of potential GOP nominees—which extends well beyond the list currently being bandied about. The challenge is to find the best president, the one who will right the ship of state the current administration sent headlong into a typhoon.

The GOP needs a nominee who doesn’t just say he or she will put America’s interests first and is on the right side on critical issues like economic growth, taxes and spending, guns, abortion, and school choice, but who has demonstrated leadership on those issues. Someone who has a dynamic vision of the future most all Americans can embrace with enthusiasm.

These people do exist. The best candidates to be “the best president” are out there now, in the U.S. Senate and running the red states. In the next campaign, their records will be what matters most. What a candidate says he wants to do needs to be measured against what he’s accomplished—or at least tried to accomplish. That goes for candidates’ record building the party as well. Did they help expand the party and its representation in Congress and the state legislatures? How many Senate, House, and gubernatorial candidates did they help? How much money did they help raise for others compared to how much they raised to fuel their own ambitions? Do they adhere to Reagan’s 11th Commandment (“thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican”), or do they resort to sharp elbows and cutting remarks against foes who should be considered friends? In short, what kind of leader do Republicans want for the next four, and perhaps eight, years?

The answer is not obvious, even for those who’ve already decided to back Trump again. He accomplished much. It’s fair to say he delivered on his promise to “Make America Great Again”—at least before the lockdowns started. His commitment to keeping his word on judges is directly responsible for the overturning of the constitutionally suspect 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which was bad law no matter which side of the issue you were on.

Trump was right for his time—but is he right for the future? He’ll get a chance to make his case after November if he chooses to run. Whether he does or doesn’t, the others who want the job will get the same chance. The Republicans who are tasked with choosing the candidate in 2024 need to keep their options open and think seriously about who can best get the country where it needs to go. If they want to win, they need to make the candidates come to them.

Newsweek contributing editor Peter Roff has written extensively about politics and the American experience for U.S. News and World Report, United Press International, and other publications. He can be reached by email at [email protected] . Follow him on Twitter @TheRoffDraft

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.

Former President Donald Trump still appears to be favored to win the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination and ultimately the general election despite the revelations of the January 6 investigation hearings of the past few weeks, new polling shows.

The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, pro-Trump attack against the U.S. Capitol held its first publicly televised hearing on June 9. Since then, the investigators have held five more hearings, with legal experts calling some of the evidence and testimony presented a ” smoking gun ” of the former president’s alleged criminal culpability.

Regardless, new polling released by Emerson College on Friday showed that more registered voters say they would back Trump in 2024 compared to Biden. Furthermore, Trump leads the GOP primary field, with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis , who is regularly touted as a top alternative, trailing by well over 30 points.

The new survey data showed just 39 percent of voters would back Biden in a hypothetical 2024 rematch against Trump. Meanwhile, the former Republican president had the support of 44 percent. An additional 12 percent said they’d back an alternative candidate and 5 percent remained undecided.

When it comes to the GOP primary for 2024, Trump had the backing of 55 percent of Republican voters. DeSantis came in distant second with just 20 percent, and former Vice President Mike Pence trailed in the single digits at 9 percent. None of the other potential Republican contenders had more than 5 percent support.

The poll included 1,271 registered voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points.

Notably, Trump’s support in a hypothetical rematch against Biden held steady since Emerson’s similar poll in May. In the previous survey, the Democratic president had the support of 42 percent compared to Trump’s 44 percent. The previous poll did not ask respondents about the GOP primary.

The current Real Clear Politics average of national polls, which includes survey data from April 19 through June 29, showed Trump leading Biden in a 2024 matchup by about 1.8 points. The former president has the support of about 45.2 percent compared to 43.4 percent for the current commander-in-chief.

Biden, 79, and the White House have confirmed multiple times that he plans to seek reelection in 2024. However, due to the president’s age and poor approval rating, some prominent Democrats have publicly and privately speculated that he could step aside for another candidate. Some have even floated the idea that a Democratic candidate could mount a challenge to the incumbent president.

Meanwhile, Trump has not officially confirmed plans to run for the presidency again in 2024. He has, however, consistently hinted at the possibility. Most analysts assume that he plans to run, although some suggest he could step aside and select a successor instead.

In an interview broadcast by Newsmax on Thursday morning, Trump was asked about DeSantis and the possibility of the two prominent Republicans runing together on one 2024 ticket.

“Well, I get along with him. I was very responsible for his success because I endorsed him and he went up like a rocket ship,” the former president said.

Trump went on to tout his current success in the polls. “I’m leading in all the polls. Against Republicans and Democrats. I’m leading in the Republican polls with numbers nobody has ever seen before and against Biden and anyone else they want to run, I’m leading against them,” he said.

Most polls , with some exceptions, do show Trump leading both the 2024 Republican primary field as well as a hypothetical general election matchup against Biden.

When you’ve lost two by-elections, which happened only because one of your MPs sexually assaulted a child and another watched tractor-based pornography in the House of Commons, there could hardly be a more apposite time for a prime minister to have a little statesman’s holiday.

So how did it go then, Johnson’s week in the global spotlight, his bid to restore a bit of dignity to whatever it is he might have left to which any dignity at all can still be restored?

It’s hard to squeeze in all the edited highlights, principally because there are none of them, but we can but try. There was the bit where he sat around a table with the rest of the G7 leaders and told them “we should take our shirts off to show we are tougher than Putin”.

It’s not quite as awkward as you might think. Theresa May notwithstanding , world leaders are more often than not blessed with phenomenal people skills, and Johnson being his usual tedious, bumbling self appeared not to bother them any more than normal.

Macron wisely said nothing. Justin Trudeau waffled a bit before changing the subject. Putin, meanwhile, has already issued a direct response. “I don’t know how they wanted to get undressed, above or below the waist,” he said. “ But I think it would be a disgusting sight in any case .”

That Putin appears to be confused as to whether taking one’s shirt off involves getting undressed above or below the waist is somewhat troubling. But then he has a lot on his mind at the moment and it’s possible he’s become confused with what he’s been reading in this week’s Private Eye magazine , which describes an incident of below-the-waist nudity involving, yes, our great statesman leader, on a sofa in his office, which another MP had the misfortune to walk in on.

The magazine does not report which MP it was, though it will doubtless make for sad reading for Neil Parish, the now former member for Tiverton and Honiton , who wouldn’t have had to bother getting his iPhone out if he’d known there was – allegedly – a live-action show to be found right behind Boris Johnson’s office door.

Far too much is made of the still photographs from grand events such as the G7 – though much is made of them precisely because they are the chief reason leaders attend them. If there were no group shots for the cameras one suspects they’d never happen at all. So Johnson probably won’t like very much the already viral picture of him reaching across the table at the Nato summit in Madrid, stretching out toward Joe Biden for a fist bump , and Biden, arms very much by his side, looking at him like he might be an anthropomorphised piece of decayed white dogs*** (have the tests ever been done?).

And there’s the rather pleasing video of Turkey’s Recep Erdogan , creeping up behind the great statesman, placing his hand on his shoulder and keeping it there while Johnson leaps to his feet and flails about in what he imagines to be some sort of charismatic alpha gorilla display but actually looks like mild terror.

You probably know a bit of the backstory here. Erdogan, though arguably not the world’s finest human being, was quite crucial to the main event of the Nato summit, namely dropping his opposition to Sweden and Finland joining Nato, the agreement that made this a genuinely historic event.

Relations between Erdogan and Johnson are probably best described as tense. Six years ago Johnson, at the age of 52, was unable to prevent himself from entering a Spectator magazine poetry competition in which he won £1,000 for a limerick about president Erdogan having sex with a goat.

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Should we care? Would Britain be better served by a leader who perhaps didn’t write limericks about “a young fellow from Ankara, Who was a terrific wankerer”, when the young fellow in question is also a key strategic ally?

Perhaps we should care more about the substance? About, for example, the pledge to increase defence spending by 2.5 per cent of GDP by, wait for it, “the end of the decade”. This announcement was made in a press conference at the end, and thankfully came during the short spell in the middle where the prime minister’s microphone was actually switched on.

Naturally, this is a welcome development, but the end of the decade is quite a long way off, and it also stands in complete contrast to his current position, which is to have formally abandoned his own manifesto commitment of increasing defence spending by 0.5 per cent above inflation every year.

So the big announcement is not to do much now, but sort it all out in five years or so, when there is surely nobody in the land, not even himself, who imagines this show will still be going on.

Meghan McCain has revealed that she’s considering running for office “in a few years,” as she voiced concerns about former President Donald Trump ‘s continued power within the Republican party.

McCain, the daughter of late Arizona Senator John McCain , is known for being an outspoken conservative, most notably through her four-year stint as a panelist on The View . While she proudly aligns herself with the right, she has drawn the line at supporting Trump and the wave of populism that has engulfed the party since his 2016 presidential run under the campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” (MAGA).

During an appearance on British TV network GB News earlier this week, McCain was asked if she would ever consider following in the footsteps of her father by running for a political post.

“Maybe in a few years. It’s the first time in my entire life I’ve ever considered it. But this fever of MAGA has to break—one way or the other,” said McCain, who departed The View last summer.

“President Trump has to get re-elected—God forbid—again, or he has to just leave the national stage. Because as we have seen in the last election and in the primaries right now, he can’t make candidates but he can break them,” she said. “And right now there’s still just a lot of people who are winning that are following in his footsteps and I would really love more ideological diversity in the party.”

However, McCain added that one stumbling block she could potentially face in her pursuit of public office is the fact that she’s the daughter of a politician.

“There’s a big disdain for political families in the country right now,” she said. “It’s very populist. President [George W.] Bush’s nephew [George P. Bush], I believe, just ran for office and lost in Texas in his home state. There’s a real palette for it where people really don’t like it.”

In an interview with Newsweek in April, McCain said that she did not vote for Trump on either of his presidential runs in 2016 and 2020. She also said that her refusal to go “full MAGA, red meat, alt-right conservative” or renounce the Republican party in light of the aforementioned group’s domination has meant that she is among the lesser-heard voices on conservative airwaves.

“I don’t want to say it’s completely in the minority, but it’s certainly not as loud,” she explained of her stance. “There’s this feeling where if you’re not a full populist and believe in the MAGA movement that you’re not welcome.”

McCain also told Newsweek that the current culture of the Republican party has made her reluctant to go back in front of the camera in the near future.

“I don’t want to have to defend things that are indefensible,” she said. “The sins of the Republican Party and the sins of President Trump are not the sins of Meghan. I’m still conservative. You know, obviously, that’s never going to change.

“What happens in the future going forward is anyone’s guess. Just simply because obviously if President Trump is the nominee [in 2024] I will not be voting for him or supporting him. And you know, I think that to go on TV, people want me to defend everything GOP…I just got really worn out about it.”

McCain, whose father faced a number of verbal attacks from Trump, further told Newsweek that there “has to be consequences” for the real-estate mogul in relation to the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.

Hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an apparent attempt to disrupt the formal certification of Joe Biden ‘s Electoral College victory in a joint session of Congress . The supporters’ attack came directly after Trump told them at a nearby Washington, D.C. rally to walk to the Capitol and “fight like hell” to save their country, following his stream of misinformation about the 2020 election results.

While the former president has consistently denied any wrongdoing in connection to the riot, the House select committee is investigating the events of January 6 and the related effort to prevent the certification of Biden’s win.

“I would like to see real legal ramifications for what happened on January 6, and who’s responsible,” McCain said. “I understand why it’s not the number one issue for American voters, because they’re worried about the economy and Russia and security and safety in major cities. I understand all of that.

“But there still has to be consequences for this behavior and this kind of violence. My fear and my sort of anxiety in this space is just that, I feel like I have been told so many times that this is going to be the moment this is going to be the thing that finally, you know, gets him. This is the lawsuit, this is the whatever this is.”

She added of Trump: “His legacy will be one of division and conflict and January 6. But my family, and I feel like I can speak for all of my six siblings and my mother, in the sense like, we do not give a f**k what a Trump thinks of my family. I never will.”