Biden claims that Democrats WANT him to run in 2024 despite poll finding 64% want another

Joe Biden has claimed Democrats want him to run in 2024 despite polling showing the majority want another candidate.

The President got into a spat with a reporter during a garden party at the White House on Tuesday afternoon and insisted he was still the favorite.

He slammed the journalist saying ‘you guys are all the same’ and told them to ‘read the polls, read the polls’, adding: ‘They want me to run.’

Biden said 92 per cent of Democrats would vote for him, citing a poll by Siena College which found he would win if the contest was today and between him and Donald Trump.

But he failed to mention that in the same article, published in the New York Times, 64 per cent of Democratic primary voters would prefer someone else in the next election.

The row came on a mixed day for the president, where he hosted the garden party at the White House – only for it to end amid storms and him making a child cry – and later jetted off to the Middle East.

The reporter asked him towards the end of the party today: ‘What’s your message to Democrats who don’t want you to run again?’

The 79-year-old president said: ‘They want me to run.’ The reporter rebutted: ‘Two-thirds say they don’t.’ Biden shouts back: ‘Read the polls. Read the polls, Jack. You guys are all the same.’

The journalist said: ‘A majority of Democrats say the don’t want you to run in 2024.’ Biden brushes away the fact repeating: ’92 percent said I did, they’d vote for me.’

The same survey also showed Biden’s approval rating in the basement at 33 percent. Among young voters, Biden is especially unpopular with nearly 95 percent wanting someone else to run in 2024.

On a more positive note for the president who turns 80 in November, in a match-up against ex-President Donald Trump, Biden comes out on top 44 percent to 41 percent.

Biden has been adamant that he will run on the Democratic ticket in two years time.

He made his remarks during an event where he hosted hundreds of lawmakers and their families at the first congressional picnic at the White House in three years in a desperate attempt at bridging the divide between Republicans and Democrats.

Biden made a child scream while taking a selfie with their parents during the picnic at the White House on Tuesday.

The president smiled and so did the parents during the picture – but the youngster’s face is contorted as he screams.

Storm clouds gathered over head and children wept as the president worked the crowd, which appeared thin on Republicans, trying to rekindle the spirit of cooperation that he felt as a junior Senator.

‘I wish we were able to do more of this so that you all got to know one another well,’ Biden said, dressed in a button-down shirt without a jacket and tie. 

The president reminisced of an increasingly quaint time on Capitol Hill, when lawmakers would spend considerably more time socializing and becoming acquainted with one another´s families. 

He recalled having lunch with the late segregationist Senator James Eastland (D-Miss).

‘We used to have debates with and, for example, Jim Eastland, with whom I agreed on virtually nothing except we were both senators.

‘But we would debate like hell on the floor of the Senate and go and have lunch together,’ Biden said on the South Lawn, flanked by his wife Jill Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

In 2019, during his primary campaign Harris blasted Biden for fondly bringing up Eastland, and fellow segregationist Herman Talmadge (D-Ga) saying, ‘it was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country.’

Biden later apologized for his comments.

Harris, dressed in a pink pantsuit, looked over at the president briefly during his comments on Tuesday, pursed her lips and looked back out on the crowd. 

‘And John McCain became one of my closest friends, even though John McCain and I were like brothers who would go at each other with hammer and tong,’ he said referring to the late Republican senator from Arizona.

White House picnics had once been staples of Washington politics, but they’ve been canceled for the last few years due to the pandemic.

‘It’s hard to dislike a colleague when you know he or she has a wife or a husband that has cancer,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to look at someone you strongly disagree with and make it personal when you know that they have a son or a daughter that has a problem.’

These casual interactions, Biden said, helped lawmakers get along better. The president, who spent 36 years in the Senate, recalled advice that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., gave him when he arrived in Washington as a young senator: spend time in the Senate Dining Room, which is for senators only, and get to know new colleagues.

Biden promised to tuck into the picnic spread of fried chicken, Philly cheesesteak sandwiches, smoked barbecue brisket, vegetable sandwiches and Dove ice cream bars pressed with the presidential seal.

Biden, who has gotten in trouble in the past for his hands-on approach to greeting, was photographed caressing children, hugging staffers and shaking hands with Speaker Nancy Pelosi. 

Though the White House picnic was cut short by an impending thunderstorm, Biden had plenty of time to mingle with lawmakers and their families, taking selfies and greeting them shortly before he was to leave for the Middle East.

The rapid pullout of Afghanistan, the rise in gas prices and inflation overall, has darkened the country’s mood and only 13 percent said that America was going in the right direction.

There’s been little bipartisan agreement in Congress. A gun bill pushed through both houses met with strong criticism from the far left wing of the party and an effort to invest in semiconductor manufacturing and other industries is hung up in committee. 

Even within his own party, he seem struggling for approval.

Biden jets off for  Middle East tour: President, 79, heads to Israel where he’ll see ‘Iron Beam’ anti-drone laser before flying to Saudi Arabia to meet MBS… but will he bring up Khashoggi?

President Joe Biden started the first visit Middle East tour of his presidency on Wednesday. 

He faces the monumental task of assuring uneasy Israeli and Saudi Arabian officials that he’s committed to preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

The 46th president begins the visit Wednesday with a three-day stop in Israel, where officials say Iran’s quickly evolving nuclear program is at the top of their agenda. 

Biden, 79,  made reviving the Iran nuclear deal, brokered by Barack Obama in 2015 and abandoned by Donald Trump in 2018, a key priority as he entered office.

Indirect talks for the United States to reenter the deal have stalled as Iran has made rapid gains in developing its nuclear program, leaving the Biden administration increasingly pessimistic about resurrecting the deal, which placed significant restrictions on Iran in exchange for sanctions relief.

Shortly after his arrival in Israel on Wednesday, Biden is expected to get a briefing on the country’s new ‘Iron Beam’ missile defense system and visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. 

In addition to meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials, he’s slated to receive Israel’s Presidential Medal of Honor and visit with US athletes taking part in the Maccabiah Games, which involve thousands of Jewish and Israeli athletes from around the globe.

Biden, in a Washington Post op-ed published Saturday, laced into Trump for quitting the nuclear deal that Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union also signed onto. 

However, he also suggested that he’s still holding onto at least a sliver of hope that the Iranians will come back into compliance.

‘My administration will continue to increase diplomatic and economic pressure until Iran is ready to return to compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal, as I remain prepared to do,’ he wrote.

Israeli officials, who briefed reporters ahead of Biden’s departure from Washington on Tuesday, said the US and Israel would issue a broad-ranging ‘Jerusalem Declaration’ that will take a tough stance on Iran’s nuclear program.

The declaration commits both countries to use ‘all elements of their national power against the Iranian nuclear threat,’ according to an Israeli official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the statement.

During his visit, the Israeli military will show him new hardware it says is essential to confronting Iran: anti-drone lasers.

While Israel has long been known for its efforts to thwart Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, Israeli officials have increasingly been sounding the alarm over Iran’s fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

This month, the Israeli military said it had intercepted a total of four unarmed drones headed for an offshore gas rig. It said the drones were Iranian-made and launched by the Lebanese group Hezbollah, which is backed by Tehran.

As concerns mount over drone warfare, Israel hopes the new ‘Iron Beam’ system will secure its skies.

While not yet operational, the military hardware was described as a ‘game-changer’ in April by then-prime minister Naftali Bennett.

Presenting such technology to Biden is a strategic move for Israel, which saw Washington approve a billion-dollar package in September for Israel’s active Iron Dome system.

The defense system has been used countless times to intercept rockets fired by militants from the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by Iran’s ally Hamas.

The Iron Dome costs roughly $50,000 per launch, while Bennett priced the Iron Beam at $3.50 per deployment.

He said the new defense system was ‘silent’ and could ‘intercept incoming UAVs, mortars, rockets and anti-tank missiles.’

The official said the Israelis would stress to Biden their view that Iran has calculated ‘time is on their side’ and is loath to give any concessions. 

The Biden administration’s last round of indirect negotiations with Iran in Doha, Qatar, late last month ended without success.

The White House has also been frustrated with repeated Iran-sponsored attacks on U.S. troops based in Iraq, though the administration says the frequency of such attacks has dropped precipitously over the last two years.

Iran also sponsored the rebel Houthis in a bloody war with the Saudis in Yemen. A U.N.-brokered cease-fire has been in place for more than four months, a fragile peace in a war that began in 2015.

Separately, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Monday said the administration believes Russia is turning to Iran to provide it with hundreds of unmanned aerial vehicles, including weapons-capable drones, for use in its ongoing war in Ukraine.

The Saudis, like the Israelis, have been frustrated that the White House has not abandoned efforts to revive the nuclear deal with Tehran.

Biden heads to the Saudi port city of Jeddah on Friday to meet with King Salman and the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is widely known by his initials MBS, and to attend a gathering of the Gulf Cooperation Council, where Iran’s nuclear program is on the agenda.

Also looming over the Saudi visit is the president’s strained relationship with the crown prince.

As a White House candidate, Biden said he would look to make the kingdom a ‘pariah’ nation over its human rights abuses. 

The relationship was further strained when Biden last year approved the release of a U.S. intelligence report that determined that MBS likely approved the 2018 killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The president arrives in Saudi Arabia, among the world’s biggest oil producers, at a moment of skyrocketing gas and food prices around the globe – driven, in part, by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. White House officials and energy analysts say there are low expectations that the Saudis or fellow members of OPEC+ will deliver relief.

Another factor in seeking a détente in the Saudi relationship is growing concern in the administration that the Saudis could move closer to China and Russia amid strains with the United States.

Biden is set to make a major statement on his administration’s vision for the Middle East while in Jeddah, according to the White House. 

The gathering of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) will give him the chance to address a broad swath of Arab leaders from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as well as the leaders of non-GCC nations – Egypt, Iraq and Jordan – that have been invited to join the meeting.

Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former U.S. State Department official, said Biden is looking forward to visiting Saudi Arabia ‘like I would look forward to a root canal operation.’

‘You’ve got a president who is terribly conflicted about this meeting,’ Miller said. ‘He can’t even acknowledge, in all of his public remarks, that he’s even going to meet with Mohammed bin Salman.’

Israeli officials are cautiously optimistic that the Biden visit could be a breakthrough moment on a slow path toward normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Biden will be the first U.S. president to travel directly from Israel to Saudi Arabia, and the two nations’ shared enmity for Iran has led to subtle cooperation.

Earlier this week, opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu praised the crown prince’s ‘contribution’ to the Abraham Accords, declarations of diplomatic and economic normalization signed by Bahrain, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the United States while Netanyahu was prime minister.

Israel is expected to hold new elections in the fall after the fragile coalition government led by Naftali Bennett crumbled last month.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Yair Lapid had expressed hopes that his country would establish formal diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia, days before Biden visits the two countries as part of a regional trip.

‘Israel extends its hand to all the countries of the region and calls on them to build ties with us, establish relations with us, and change history for our children,’ Lapid said during a weekly Cabinet meeting. 

He said Biden will carry ‘a message of peace and hope from us’ when he embarks for Saudi Arabia.