WASHINGTON — President Trump told CBS that former Vice President Joe Biden would be a “dream” opponent in 2020 because of how he fared in past attempts to secure the Democratic Party nomination.
Biden said Tuesday that he would decide on a presidential run by January, telling a forum in Bogota that the best time to gauge voter and financial support would be after midterm elections.
Age-wise, it would be a septuagenarian matchup: Biden turns 76 in November, while Trump turned 72 last month.
“Well, I dream,I dream about Biden. That’s a dream,” Trump said in a video clip aired this morning. “Look, Joe Biden ran three times. He never got more than 1 percent and President Obama took him out of the garbage heap, and everybody was shocked that he did. I’d love to have it be Biden.”
“I think I’d like to have any one of those people that we’re talking about — you know, there’s probably the group of seven or eight right now. I’d really like to – I’d like to run against any one of them, but Biden never by himself could never do anything,” Trump continued. “President Obama took him, made him vice president and he was fine.”
“But you go back and look at how he succeeded in running, when he ran two or three times, I don’t think he ever break — broke one. He was at the one or less level, 1 percent or less level.”
The former longtime senator from Pennsylvania unsuccessfully ran for the nomination in 1988 and 2008.
So far, Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.) is the only Dem who has announced he’s vying for the Democratic nomination in 2020.
Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have been hitting the campaign trail this season, though, in support of midterm candidates in some presidential battleground and early primary states.
Other senators whose names have been floated for 2020 include Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).
A poll of Democrats released last month found Biden with the highest support in the field, at 32 percent. But a new poll found 73 percent of Democratic Party voters hoping for a fresh face on the ballot.
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