President Joe Biden told a rally in Michigan he was “not done yet” as he continued to defy calls for him to leave the US presidential race.
Mr Biden repeated to a crowd in Detroit that he was still running for re-election, vowing to “shine a spotlight on Donald Trump” and what the Republican would do if he returned to the White House.
At the same school where he positioned himself as a bridge to the next generation of Democratic leaders four years ago, the president responded to chants of “Don’t you quit” and “We got your back” by lambasting an expansive far-right policy agenda crafted by conservative think tanks that Mr Trump has scrambled to distance himself from, while ticking off several items on his own wish list for the first 100 days of his second term.
“You made me the nominee, no one else — not the press, not the pundits, not the insiders, not donors,” Mr Biden said. “You, the voters. You decided. No one else. And I’m not going anywhere.”
The show of force at the evening rally was part of his team’s relentless sprint to convince Democratic politicians, nervous donors and a sceptical electorate that at the age of 81, he is still capable of being president ahead of November’s election.
One Democratic senator and roughly 20 House Democrats have publicly called on Mr Biden to step aside.
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries told Democrats he had met privately with Mr Biden after a news conference on Friday, sharing the “full breadth” of views from lawmakers about the path forward in the president’s campaign for re-election.
But the support Mr Biden retains among Democrats was clear among the hundreds of supporters at the rally, who waved signs that read “Motown is Joetown” and enthusiastically cheered the president’s remarks — and jeered at any mention of Mr Trump.
“He inherited millions of dollars only to squander it. He’s filed for bankruptcy six times,” Mr Biden said. “He even went bankrupt running a casino. I didn’t think that was even possible. Doesn’t the house always win in a casino?”
He also singled out Project 2025, a massive proposed overhaul of the federal government drafted by long-time allies and former officials in the Trump administration that the former president has insisted he knows “nothing” of.
“You heard about it? It’s a blueprint for a second Trump term that every American should read and understand,” Mr Biden said, accusing his opponent of trying to run from the plan “just like he’s trying to distance himself from overturning Roe v Wade because he knows how toxic it is. But we’re not gonna let that happen.”
Biden also criticised the media, claiming it was focusing on his errors and not on Mr Trump’s.
It prompted his supporters to boo reporters in the room — a staple of Mr Trump’s rallies — although Mr Biden tried briefly to calm the jeers, saying “no, no, no.”
He smiled, though, when the audience repeatedly chanted “lock him up” in reference to Mr Trump, who was convicted on felony charges in New York relating to his hush money payments to an adult film actress around the 2016 election.
