New campaign, same old Joe: Biden repeats same talking points in first 2024 speech

President Joe Biden made no major changes to his standard stump speech on Tuesday, which was delivered to a large union audience just hours after announcing his 2024 bid for the White House.

Biden deployed many of the same lines — going after the “MAGA Republicans,” including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and former President Donald Trump — and briefly choked after referring to the loss of a family member to cancer.

His eldest son Beau Biden died of glioblastoma in 2015.

The president also falsely claimed that his “grandfather” died two weeks before he was born in the same hospital — despite the senior Biden’s obituary saying he had died more than a year before the president’s date of birth and that the hospitals were not were the same.

Still, Biden picked the right audience to make his first post-announcement appearance, earning several standing ovations and a raucous “four more years” chant as the president teased his reelection by saying, “It’s time to get the job done.” to clear.’

Biden chaired the North American Building Trades Unions Conference at the Washington Hilton, where he will return Saturday for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

“I’m so happy to see you guys, this feels like coming home,” the president said at the start of his speech.

He didn’t speak explicitly about his bid for the White House, but he knocked down the Republicans and earned boos from the largely Democratic-leaning public.

Biden mocked Trump for his many infrastructure weeks, which always seemed to coincide with a scandal.

‘Under my predecessor infrastructure became a cliché, under my vigilance infrastructure has become a decade [long] head,” said the president, causing the audience to stand.

To the union public, he teased that “all building materials used in federal infrastructure projects must be made in America.”

“It’s been the law since the 1930s, but no one had the guts to insist on it,” he added.

Still, Biden picked the right audience to make his first post-announcement appearance, earning several standing ovations and a raucous “four more years” chant as the president teased his reelection by saying, “It’s time to get the job done.” to clear’

Biden joked that genuine “Left Democratic newspapers, like the Wall Street Journal” had run a piece under his watch on the manufacturing boom, praising that “America is back in the factory business.”

The New York Times, the president said, was making production great again and bringing the US “the kind of production boost Trump promised.”

“He delivered!” shouted a female audience member.

Biden again insisted that Republicans in Congress have told him behind closed doors that they are in favor of some of his policies.

“Joe, we agree with you, but if I do this, I will lose my primary,” Biden said.

“No profile in courage, but they acknowledge it.”

Biden denounced some Republican attempts to reverse the Inflation Reduction Act, with its health benefits, which passed only by Democratic votes last summer.

“The new Speaker of the House didn’t think it was necessary,” Biden said.

“Me neither!” shouted a male audience member.

Biden also took on McCarthy and the House GOP for pushing through a spending bill that would drastically cut federal spending — a trade for raising the debt ceiling.

Biden said cutting social programs for children, the elderly, health care for veterans, while giving tax breaks to big oil companies, big pharma and the richest corporations was like “the same old trickle dressed in MAGA clothes,” declaring repeated a line of attack he started using last week.

He noted that “even Donald Trump said I can’t imagine anyone ever thinking of using the debt ceiling as a bargaining wedge.”

“People, America is not a dead end nation,” Biden said. “We pay our bills.”