President Joe Biden said Thursday that two journalists told him they would have to leave the country if Donald Trump won the election because he has threatened to jail them.
Biden made the claim while a donor in California and outlined the dangers of a second Trump term.
He mentioned journalist Katie Couric, who was in the audience.
“Katie, two of your former colleagues who are not at the same network have told me personally that if he wins, they will have to leave the country because he is threatening to put them in jail,” he said.
Trump has already made it clear that he is willing to take revenge on opponents if he wins in November.
President Joe Biden said Thursday that two journalists told him they would have to leave the country if Donald Trump won the election because he has threatened to jail them
And he has repeatedly clashed with journalists who tried to ask him tough questions.
Biden said, “We can’t take anything for granted. Trump and his friends are trying to divide us.”
He also said that seven Republican senators told him privately that they wanted to work with him but could not because of the threat of being challenged with a primary.
“I promised I wouldn’t mention them by name,” he said before about 60 guests in the basement of billionaire developer and stem cell campaigner Bob Klein.
‘It doesn’t say much about political courage. It says what the state of the party is at the moment.”
Biden is in his third day of fundraising across California as he ramps up his reelection fight.
Earlier Thursday he met the widow and daughter of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died last week in a Siberian penal colony.
The meeting took place at San Francisco’s historic Fairmont Hotel, which was briefly disrupted by protesters demanding a ceasefire in Gaza.
“Biden, Biden, you can’t hide. We accuse you of genocide,” they sang, as stunned guests watched in the hotel coffee shop.
About 30 demonstrators from Gaza entered the hotel where President Joe Biden was staying in San Francisco on Thursday and chanted: “Ceasefire now.”
Other events during his trip included a reception in Beverly Hills on Tuesday where donors spent as much as $250,000 to attend, and a dinner at the San Francisco home of Gordon Getty, son of oil magnate J. Paul Getty, on Wednesday evening.
On Wednesday he also spoke to a powerful group of campaigners, the Climate Leaders Group, in the drawing room of a Pacific Heights home.
“We have a crazy SOB like that guy Putin and the others and we always have to worry about nuclear conflict, but the existential threat to humanity is the climate,” he told them.
It comes as his government plans more sanctions to punish Moscow over the death in a Siberian penal colony of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
The Russian leader hit back a day later, telling Russian state television with a mocking smile: “We are ready to work with any president.”
“But I believe that for us, Biden is a more preferable president for Russia, and based on what he just said, I’m absolutely right.”
Biden also used Wednesday’s reception to ridicule former President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly claimed that his situation – which is being pursued by the court – is similar to Navalny’s.
“Listen to some of the things this guy has said, comparing himself to Navalny saying that this country has become a communist country, and he is being persecuted just as Navalny was persecuted,” he said.
Biden plans new sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his regime after the death in a Siberian penal colony of opposition leader Alexei Navalny
He arrived in San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon, where he was greeted by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They traveled to a campaign reception together on Marine One
Biden made an unannounced stop at CJ’s Cafe in Baldwin Hills on Wednesday before continuing to Culver City for his speech at the library
‘I don’t know where this came from.
“If I stood here ten, fifteen years ago and said all this, you would all think I should commit.”
He addressed an intimate gathering of about 25 people, sitting on chairs arranged near bookcases containing books such as “Beyond Oil” and “Field Notes from a Catastrophe.”