Biden says global leaders are terrified of Trump and quietly tell him, ‘He can’t win’
CONCORD, N.H. — President Joe Biden addressed his predecessor on Tuesday, suggesting that world leaders are terrified of what Donald Trump ‘s return to the White House could impact democratic governance around the world.
“Every international meeting I attend,” Biden said, specifically referring to his whirlwind trip to Germany last week, “they pull me aside — one leader after another, quietly — and say, ‘Joe, he can’t win.’ My democracy is at stake.”
With his voice rising, Biden then asked if “America is running away, who is running the world? WHO? Name me a country.”
The comments came during a rather sedate speech about health care in New Hampshire. They were a dose of unfiltered politics at an event otherwise focused on Biden’s policy legacy, with the race to replace him ending just two weeks afterward. And they made clear that the president also sees Trump’s failure to succeed him as an important part of how he could go down in history.
After the speech, Biden went to a campaign office to support New Hampshire’s Democratic candidates and continued his stances against Trump, at one point even saying, “We have to lock him up.” Some supporters of vice president Kamala Harris -WHO replaced Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket in July – have shouted at her rallies, although such chants actually have their origins with Trump supporters calling for jail time for his 2016 opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Biden calling it out received applause from those present at the campaign office, but Biden quickly added: “lock him up politically. Shutting him out is what we have to do.”
Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Biden has “simply admitted the truth: his and Kamala’s plan has always been to politically persecute their opponent, President Trump, because they cannot beat him fair and square.”
Biden didn’t mention Harris much during his remarks, though he noted she was endorsed by some high-profile Republicans. That includes former Rep. Liz Cheney, once the Republican Party’s No. 3 in the House of Representatives and daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney. Instead, Biden continued to focus on Trump, criticizing him for taking pride in being friends with Russian President Vladimir Putin and joking that Trump “believes in the free press like I believe I can climb Mount Everest .”
He said Trump and supporters of his “Make America Great Again” movement have an “anti-democratic” attitude toward the way the Constitution functions and “virtually no respect for it.”
“Think about what would happen if Donald Trump won this election,” Biden said, adding, “He’s not kidding about it, he’s deadly serious” and “It’s a serious, serious problem.”
“We have to win,” Biden said.
Biden was in Concord, the capital of New Hampshire, with Senator Vermont. Bernie Sandersthe last candidate he defeated to win the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. They both appeared at Concord Community College to announce to the Department of Health and Human Services that nearly 1.5 million Medicare enrollees in the first half of the years had saved nearly $1 billion on prescription drugs.
A large part of these savings was the result of a ceiling on out-of-pocket drug costs, which was created by the clean-up campaign climate and healthcare law that the Biden administration helped pass through Congress in 2022. She set an annual cap of $3,500 that recipients of Medicare, the government health insurance plans for seniors, will pay for their prescriptions, while making recommended vaccines for older Americans, such as immunization against shingles, free.
Biden said seniors won’t be the only ones benefiting from the savings: “It will also save taxpayers billions of dollars.”
Next year, the drug cost ceiling for Medicare recipients will drop to $2,000 per year, which will save some of the sickest Americans even more. But for others, the change has come at a price: it is contributed to the rising premiums for drug plans that the government has tried to contain by paying insurers billions of dollars from the Medicare trust fund. Still, some insurers have increased subscription prices significant – or plans withdrawn from the market.
However, the legislation is expected to deliver big savings for taxpayers and Medicare enrollees in other ways in the long run.
For the first time ever, the federal government will negotiate the price of ten of Medicare’s most expensive drugs. The negotiated list prices, announced in August, will come into effect in 2026. Taxpayers spend more than $50 billion annually on the 10 drugs, which include the popular blood thinners Xarelto and Eliquis and diabetes drugs Jardiance and Januvia.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that Medicare drug pricing negotiations will save taxpayers $3.7 billion in the first year.
But his advocacy for lower drug prices was overshadowed by Biden’s warnings about Trump.
“No president has ever been like this man. He is a real threat to our democracy.”
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Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Amanda Seitz and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.