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Joe Biden claims he can beat Donald Trump in his home state of Florida in the 2024 presidential election. Biden threw down the gauntlet when he visited his predecessor’s backyard during a trip to the Sunshine State to raise money for his campaign. The president made the claim despite having lost Florida to Trump in the 2020 election by four percentage points, and that a Democrat had not won it since 2012. “Here in Florida you’ve had a real dose of Trumpism,” Biden told donors at a fundraising event.
He then made the sign of the cross, which led to laughter among the listeners. “I think we can win Florida,” he told them. He added, “We have to keep the White House, we have to keep the Senate and we have to win back the House.”
Florida is now home not only to Trump, but also to Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who won re-election in a landslide in 2022 over Democrat Charlie Crist.
In 2020, Biden increased the Democratic share of the vote in Palm Beach County, Miami-Dade County and Broward County, two of which he visited on Tuesday. At his first fundraising event, at the Pelican Club in Jupiter, Biden said, “Think back to the mess Donald Trump has left this country.”
He attacked his predecessor for his handling of the pandemic and for leaving “an economy reeling.” The president told his audience, “You are the reason Donald Trump is the defeated president. And you’re the reason we’re going to make him a loser again.”
His second backer was at the home of his national finance chairman Chris Korge in Miami. Tickets reportedly cost as much as $250,000 to co-chair the event.
Biden has trailed Trump in a slew of recent national polls and fallen to historically low approval ratings. He also shows weakness in the so-called ‘blue wall’ of industrial states that were key to his victory four years ago. In one, Michigan, Biden trailed Trump 47-39 in a recent poll by Detroit News and WDIV-TV.
Biden will travel to that key battleground state on Thursday in an effort to make up ground against Trump. The president’s chances in Rust Belt states like Michigan have been boosted in recent days by support from the powerful United Auto Workers union.
In Wisconsin, which Biden visited last week, he defeated Trump by just three points in a Marquette University Law School poll in November. His favorable rating there was only 42 percent, compared to 37 percent for Trump.
Meanwhile, Trump, 77, continues to face a primary challenge from Nikki Haley, who argues the nation should not have a race between “two 80-year-olds.” She claims that Trump is deteriorating mentally, but is trailing him by a wide margin in the polls that follow the race for the Republican presidential candidate.
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