US President Joe Biden 'not sure' he'd be seeking reelection if not for Donald Trump

US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that he was undecided if he would run for reelection next year if Republican competitor Donald Trump did not also run.

“If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running. But we cannot let him win,” the 81-year-old Democrat told a 2024 election campaign fundraiser in Weston, Massachusetts.

Biden applauded the “powerful voice” of former Republican senator Liz Cheney, who warned on Sunday that the United States will be “sleepwalking into dictatorship” if twice-impeached former President Donald Trump is re-elected.

He also referenced the Atlantic magazine describing the risks faced by a second Trump term, one of three major US media sources, along with the Washington Post and New York Times, to issue similar warnings in recent days.

During a previous Boston event, Biden criticised Trump’s increasingly inflammatory campaign rhetoric, including labelling his opponents “vermin.” That, according to Biden, mimicked the terminology used in Germany during the 1930s, when Adolf Hitler’s Nazis were on the rise.

“Trump’s not even hiding the ball anymore. He’s telling us what he’s going to do,” Biden said. “He’s making no bones about it.”

On his return to Washington, reporters asked Biden again if he’d be running without Trump as his opponent.

“He is running and I have to run,” Biden said.

If Trump drops out, would Biden do the same?

“No, now now,” Biden said.

The Democrat, who beat Trump in 2020, an election that Trump still refuses to accept, has repeatedly portrayed himself as defending American democracy in next year’s vote.

Trump, however, is narrowly ahead in opinion polls despite facing a number of criminal trials including one for election subversion.

Biden’s age is a particular concern with voters and there have been calls from some Democrats for him to step aside for a new candidate.

“Joe Biden is the real dictator,” Trump responded in a post on his conservative Truth Social network on Tuesday.