WASHINGTON: Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has said Joe Biden is likely to die before his 86th birthday.
She said it is unlikely Joe Biden would “make it” to the end of a second term were he to be re-elected to the White House. Mr Biden (80) has announced that he was running for re-election in 2024. He is already the oldest president in the US history. By the end of a second term, if elected, Mr Biden would be 86.
“He announced that he’s running again in 2024, and I think that we can all be very clear and say with a matter of fact that if you vote for Joe Biden you really are counting on a President Harris, because the idea that he would make it until 86 years old is not something that I think is likely,” Ms Haley said in an interview to Fox News on Thursday.
Haley was referring to President Biden’s deputy, vice president Kamala Harris, who would take over the presidency if Biden died in office. The vice president featured prominently in the video which launched president Biden’s re-election bid.
The White House, however, issued a blunt response to Ms Haley’s comments, reported NBC News. “As you know, we don’t directly respond to campaigns from here. But honestly, I forgot she was running,” said Deputy press secretary Andrew Bates. Some Democratic voters have indicated they would prefer he not run, in part because of his age – concerns Mr Biden himself has called “totally legitimate”.
A recent The Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research poll showed just 47% of Democrats said they desired him to seek a second term, up from 37% in February. “With regard to age, I can’t even say, I guess, how old I am. I can’t even say the number,” Mr Biden said on Wednesday at a joint news conference with South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol. “It doesn’t register with me. I took a hard look at it before I decided to run. And I feel good.”
Biden’s video announcing his presidential bid shows him jogging in his suit. Former US president Trump also launched his third bid for the presidency in November 2022.
As it stands, analysts think a Biden-Trump 2024 election contest is likely, in a re-run of their race for the White House in 2020.
Nikki Haley
Ms Haley, who served as a UN ambassador under Trump’s previous administration, became the second Republican candidate to throw her hat into the ring after her former boss. The 51-year-old former South Carolina governor is being seen as an ‘outsider’.
She announced her decision to run two months back, saying it was time for a “new generation of leadership to rediscover fiscal responsibility, strengthen our country, our pride and our purpose and secure our border”.
Former vice president Mike Pence is also exploring a possible challenge to Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, suggest the reports. On Thursday, he appeared before a federal grand jury investigating Mr Trump’s role in efforts to overturn the 2020 polls, according to the reports.
