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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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Bangladesh Says Student Leaders Held for Their Own Safety

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
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Bangladesh Says Student Leaders Held for Their Own Safety

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)

Bangladesh said three student leaders had been taken into custody for their own safety after the government blamed their protests against civil service job quotas for days of deadly nationwide unrest.

Students Against Discrimination head Nahid Islam and two other senior members of the protest group were Friday forcibly discharged from hospital and taken away by a group of plainclothes detectives.

The street rallies organized by the trio precipitated a police crackdown and days of running clashes between officers and protesters that killed at least 201 people, according to an AFP tally of hospital and police data.

Islam earlier this week told AFP he was being treated at the hospital in the capital Dhaka for injuries sustained during an earlier round of police detention.

Police had initially denied that Islam and his two colleagues were taken into custody before home minister Asaduzzaman Khan confirmed it to reporters late on Friday.

"They themselves were feeling insecure. They think that some people were threatening them," he said.

"That's why we think for their own security they needed to be interrogated to find out who was threatening them. After the interrogation, we will take the next course of action."

Khan did not confirm whether the trio had been formally arrested.

Days of mayhem last week saw the torching of government buildings and police posts in Dhaka, and fierce street fights between protesters and riot police elsewhere in the country.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government deployed troops, instituted a nationwide internet blackout and imposed a curfew to restore order.

- 'Carried out raids' -

The unrest began when police and pro-government student groups attacked street rallies organized by Students Against Discrimination that had remained largely peaceful before last week.

Islam, 26, the chief coordinator of Students Against Discrimination, told AFP from his hospital bed on Monday that he feared for his life.

He said that two days beforehand, a group of people identifying themselves as police detectives blindfolded and handcuffed him and took him to an unknown location to be tortured before he was released the next morning.

His colleague Asif Mahmud, also taken into custody at the hospital on Friday, told AFP earlier that he had also been detained by police and beaten at the height of last week's unrest.

Police have arrested at least 4,500 people since the unrest began.

"We've carried out raids in the capital and we will continue the raids until the perpetrators are arrested," Dhaka Metropolitan Police joint commissioner Biplob Kumar Sarker told AFP.

"We're not arresting general students, only those who vandalized government properties and set them on fire."