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Biden 'Not Sure' He'd Be Running if Trump Was Not in 2024 Race

US President Joe Biden speaks to the press after returning from a trip to Boston, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 05 December 2023. EPA/BONNIE CASH / POOL
US President Joe Biden speaks to the press after returning from a trip to Boston, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 05 December 2023. EPA/BONNIE CASH / POOL
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Biden 'Not Sure' He'd Be Running if Trump Was Not in 2024 Race

US President Joe Biden speaks to the press after returning from a trip to Boston, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 05 December 2023. EPA/BONNIE CASH / POOL
US President Joe Biden speaks to the press after returning from a trip to Boston, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 05 December 2023. EPA/BONNIE CASH / POOL

President Joe Biden said on Tuesday he may have skipped mounting a 2024 re-election bid if he were not facing Donald Trump because the Republican poses a unique threat to the United States.
"If Trump wasn't running, I'm not sure I'd be running," Biden said at a fundraising event for his 2024 campaign outside of Boston. "We cannot let him win,” Reuters quoted him as saying.
Biden's striking self-assessment comes as even staunch Democratic voters express concerns about the president's age. The Democrat turned 81 years old last month and is already the eldest Oval Office occupant in history.
"Somebody gave him a talking point they thought would sound good," Trump, who was president from 2017 to 2021, said at a Fox News town hall on Tuesday.
Biden, seeking a second four-year term in next year's election, later told reporters at the White House that he would not drop out of the race.
"No, not now," Biden said when asked if he would consider stepping aside if Trump, 77, stopped seeking his own second term. "Look, he is running, and I have to run."
Asked if he would have run were Trump not in the race, Biden said, "I expect so."
During his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden often mentioned that his decision to run was due in part to then-President Trump's handling of issues, including a 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Now, Biden faces limited competition for his party's nomination and is again positioning Trump as a danger to democracy itself.
Trump, who faces criminal charges over his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss, has painted Biden as a dangerous autocrat.
After considering the decision for weeks with family and close confidants, Biden announced his re-election bid in April, coming to the private belief that neither Vice President Kamala Harris nor any other Democratic hopeful could beat Trump in next year's general election, according to a former White House official who requested anonymity to discuss the president's thinking.
The president's aides increasingly regard Trump's frontrunner status for the Republican presidential nomination as insurmountable, according to two of those Democrats who also declined to be named.
Biden has repeatedly made comments about Trump during a fundraising blitz that started on Tuesday in Boston and is set to include at least nine events before the end of the month.
"I don’t think anyone doubts our democracy is at risk again," Biden said earlier on Tuesday.
Recent polling has shown the Republican frontrunner leading Biden in hypothetical matchups in key swing states and on the national level.

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World

Italian PM Calls Threatened US Tariffs Over Greenland a ‘Mistake’

Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni speaks during a press conference with Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi at the prime minister's official residence in Tokyo on January 16, 2026. (AFP)
Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni speaks during a press conference with Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi at the prime minister's official residence in Tokyo on January 16, 2026. (AFP)
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Italian PM Calls Threatened US Tariffs Over Greenland a ‘Mistake’

Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni speaks during a press conference with Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi at the prime minister's official residence in Tokyo on January 16, 2026. (AFP)
Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni speaks during a press conference with Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi at the prime minister's official residence in Tokyo on January 16, 2026. (AFP)

Italy's prime minister called US President Donald Trump's threat to slap tariffs on opponents of his plan to seize Greenland a "mistake" on Sunday, adding she had told him her views.

"I believe that imposing new sanctions today would be a mistake," Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni told journalists during a trip to Seoul.

"I spoke to Donald Trump a few hours ago and told him what I think, and I spoke to the NATO secretary general, who confirmed that NATO is beginning to work on this issue."

However, the far-right prime minister -- a Trump ally in Europe -- sought to downplay the conflict, telling journalists "there has been a problem of understanding and communication" between Europe and the United States related to the Arctic island, an autonomous territory of Denmark.

Trump has threatened to impose tariffs of up to 25 percent on all goods sent to the United States from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland over their objections to his moves.

Meloni said it was up to NATO to take an active role in the growing crisis.

"NATO is the place where we must try to organize together deterrents against interference that may be hostile in a territory that is clearly strategic, and I believe that the fact that NATO has begun to work on this is a good initiative," she told reporters.

Meloni said that "from the American point of view, the message that had come from this side of the Atlantic was not clear".

"It seems to me that the risk is that the initiatives of some European countries were interpreted as anti-American, which was clearly not the intention."

Meloni did not specify to what exactly she was referring.

Trump claims the United States needs Greenland for its national security.

World

Drone Strike Cuts Power Supply in Russia-Held Parts of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Region

This photo, provided by Ukraine's 65th Mechanized Brigade press service, shows a regional border stele decorated with national flags and military unit emblems in Orikhiv district in the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (Andriy Andriyenko/Ukraine's 65th Mechanized Brigade via AP)
This photo, provided by Ukraine's 65th Mechanized Brigade press service, shows a regional border stele decorated with national flags and military unit emblems in Orikhiv district in the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (Andriy Andriyenko/Ukraine's 65th Mechanized Brigade via AP)
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Drone Strike Cuts Power Supply in Russia-Held Parts of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Region

This photo, provided by Ukraine's 65th Mechanized Brigade press service, shows a regional border stele decorated with national flags and military unit emblems in Orikhiv district in the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (Andriy Andriyenko/Ukraine's 65th Mechanized Brigade via AP)
This photo, provided by Ukraine's 65th Mechanized Brigade press service, shows a regional border stele decorated with national flags and military unit emblems in Orikhiv district in the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (Andriy Andriyenko/Ukraine's 65th Mechanized Brigade via AP)

More than 200,000 consumers in the Russian-held part of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region were left without electricity on Sunday, the ‌Moscow-installed regional governor ‌said, after a ‌Ukrainian ⁠drone strike ‌on Saturday.

In a statement posted on Telegram, Yevgeny Balitsky said that work was ongoing to restore the power supply, but that almost 400 settlements remain without electricity.

Temperatures are well below freezing ⁠throughout the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, around 75% of ‌which is controlled by Russia.

Russia ‍has frequently bombarded ‍Ukraine's power infrastructure throughout its nearly ‍four-year war, causing rolling daily blackouts, and has also targeted heating systems this winter.

Separately, the governor of the Russian border region of Belgorod, which has come under regular Ukrainian attack since 2022, ⁠said that one person had been killed and another wounded by a drone strike on the border village of Nechaevka.

Further south, in the Caucasus mountains region of North Ossetia, two children and one adult were injured when a Ukrainian drone struck a residential building in the town ‌of Beslan, the region's governor said.

World

Danish Foreign Minister to Visit NATO Allies Over Greenland

Denmark's Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen reacts, following his and Greenland's Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt meeting with US Senators Angus King (I-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and a press conference, in Washington DC, US, January 14, 2026. (Reuters)
Denmark's Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen reacts, following his and Greenland's Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt meeting with US Senators Angus King (I-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and a press conference, in Washington DC, US, January 14, 2026. (Reuters)
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Danish Foreign Minister to Visit NATO Allies Over Greenland

Denmark's Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen reacts, following his and Greenland's Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt meeting with US Senators Angus King (I-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and a press conference, in Washington DC, US, January 14, 2026. (Reuters)
Denmark's Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen reacts, following his and Greenland's Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt meeting with US Senators Angus King (I-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and a press conference, in Washington DC, US, January 14, 2026. (Reuters)

Denmark's foreign minister is to visit fellow NATO members Norway, the UK and Sweden to discuss the alliance's Arctic security strategy, his ministry announced Sunday.

Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen will visit Oslo on Sunday, travel to London on Monday and then to Stockholm on Thursday.

The diplomatic tour follows US President Donald Trump's threat to punish eight countries -- including the three Rasmussen is visiting -- with tariffs over their opposition to his plan to seize control of Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory.

Trump has accused Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland of playing a "very dangerous game" after they sent a few dozen troops to the island as part of a military drill.

"In an unstable and unpredictable world, Denmark needs close friends and allies," Rasmussen stated in a press release.

"Our countries share the view that we all agree on the need to strengthen NATO's role in the Arctic, and I look forward to discussing how to achieve this," he said.

An extraordinary meeting of EU ambassadors has been called in Brussels for Sunday afternoon.

Denmark, "in cooperation with several European allies", recently joined a declaration on Greenland stating that the mineral-rich island is part of NATO and that its security is a "shared responsibility" of alliance members, the ministry statement added.

Since his return to the White House for a second term, Trump has made no secret of his desire to annex Greenland, defending the strategy as necessary for national security and to ward off supposed Russian and Chinese advances in the Arctic.