The president is confident in the beat
U.S. President Joe Biden believes he can defeat Donald Trump in the presidential election again if they campaign, as he already succeeded in 2020.
"I believe I can beat Donald Trump again," he said in response to a related question from a reporter in an interview with CNN that aired Tuesday night.
Asked how he felt about public comments about his age, Biden, who will turn 80 in November, said he believes the only thing that matters is whether he can do his job as president.
Biden cited his legislative accomplishments, including the bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Democrats' climate change, health care reform and tax reform bills, and the bipartisan gun safety reform bill passed after the Uvalde, Texas, Buffalo and New York mass shootings.
"I think it's a question of has anyone done more in his first two years in office?" Biden added. "That's what they've been saying about my age since I started running."
The president called these accomplishments evidence that Democrats will be competitive in next month's midterm elections.
But Biden, who turns 80 next month, did not offer any plans to run for a second term in 2024.
"I'm not going to talk about my decision, I'm going to make it about the off-year election," Biden said. "After it's done in November, I'll be in the process of making a decision."
Biden said a recession in the U.S. economy is possible, but he does not expect one.
Asked by the host whether he thinks Americans should prepare for a recession, Biden said no.
He said predictions that the U.S. economy is facing a recession "are heard every six months." "And it hasn't happened yet," Biden recalled, commenting, at the host's request, on a statement by James Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, a major U.S. bank, that the U.S. economy could go into recession in six to nine months.
In September, head of the Federal Reserve (Fed) Jerome Powell said that stabilizing the U.S. economy is a difficult task, and it is still unknown whether the authorities will lead to the prevention of recession in the country. The Fed intends to set the benchmark interest rate at a certain level, and then maintain this state of affairs until inflation in the country falls to 2%. The regulator changed downward the forecast of U.S. GDP growth for the next three years.
