President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden visited their son Beau’s grave in Wilmington on Saturday before meeting with campaign staff ahead of a political trip to Los Angeles where they will try to shore up the president’s dwindling support among Black voters .
On the way to campaign headquarters in downtown Wilmington, the Bidens stopped at St. Joseph at Brandywine Church to visit their son, who died of brain cancer in 2015.
They then went to the ceremonial opening of their headquarters, where Biden gathered his team and said Donald Trump behaved even worse than in the 2020 campaign.
“The man we’re up against, he’s not for anything, he’s against everything. And no, I’m serious, it’s the weirdest campaign I’ve ever been a part of, it’s even worse in terms of its behavior than the last time in 2020,” Biden said.
President Joe Biden visited his campaign staff in Wilmington
“This is more of a mission,” he told them. ‘We cannot lose this campaign. For the good of the country.”
“It’s way beyond me, it’s in the best interest of the country,” he said.
The Bidens’ visit to Beau’s grave comes the day after they were at Dover Air Force Base, where they attended the dignified transfer of the remains of the three American soldiers killed in Jordan last weekend. President Biden has repeatedly said he believed Beau’s cancer was caused by being near burns in Iraq when Beau was stationed there.
The entire Democratic ticket was in Wilmington for the official opening of their 2024 campaign headquarters. Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gen. Doug Emhoff flew from Washington, D.C., to meet the Bidens to speak to staff.
The opening comes as Donald Trump is moving towards the Republican nomination and Democrats are expressing concern about the way the re-election campaign is being conducted.
Biden brushed off the concerns in his speech to staff.
“Look, I feel good about where we are, I really do. You know, people are starting to focus,” he said.
He noted that other world leaders want to see him win a second term.
“Every time I leave, no joke, whether it’s the G20 or the G7, wherever they are, they pull me aside one by one and say: you have to win, you have to win,” he said.
“So there’s a lot at stake, folks, we have a huge obligation, but you know what, I think it’s time to finish the job here.”
The Bidens will head to Los Angeles on Saturday afternoon, where the president and first lady will meet with Black leaders in the city for the Grammys.
Biden’s declining support among black voters is one of many red flags being waved by Democrats as polls show a Trump-Biden rematch in 2024 is essentially a draw.
After Trump won the New Hampshire primary, the Biden campaign declared that he had essentially blocked the Republican nomination and focused their firepower on the former president.
Some Democrats fear Biden is not being tough enough on his Republican nemesis as his campaign focuses on hiring — especially in key states — and boosting its massive campaign coffers.
Key White House staffers — including Jen O’Malley Dillon, Mitch Landrieu and Mike Donilon — have moved on to the campaign. O’Malley Dillon was the campaign manager for Biden’s successful 2020 run.
President Joe Biden speaks with campaign staff as first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff listen
President Joe Biden speaks to children during the opening of the Biden for President campaign office in Wilmington
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden also visited Beau Biden’s grave in Wilmington, a visit that came the day after they attended a dignified transfer of remains at Dover Air Force Base (above)
Beau Biden served in the Delaware National Guard when Joe Biden was vice president (above); President Biden has repeatedly said he believed Beau’s cancer was caused by being near burns in Iraq when Beau was stationed there.
Biden raised more than $97 million for his re-election campaign in the last three months of last year.
Trump, meanwhile, is hemorrhaging money from his PAC in the form of legal fees.
Donald Trump’s Save America Leadership PAC and the Make America Great Again PAC spent $56 million on legal fees last year, a figure that includes $30 million in the last half of the year.
The president still has vulnerabilities that worry loyalists. In addition to his age – at 81 years old he is the oldest American ever elected president – a USA TODAY/Suffolk University survey last month showed he has the support of just 63% of black voters, a group he carried by as many as 87% in 2020.
Biden has stepped up his efforts, including making trips to South Carolina, where Black voters gave him his first primary victory in the 2020 election.
And on Saturday, he and Jill Biden will head to Los Angeles to meet with black leaders in the city’s entertainment industry for the Grammys.
The Bidens will not attend the music awards ceremony — although Jill Biden did attend last year — but will talk to industry leaders about the issues at stake in the election and how they can use their platforms to to mobilize voters, Deadline reported.
The Biden campaign will run a campaign ad at the Grammys that will focus on Biden’s support for abortion rights, which Democrats are raising as a major issue in the 2024 election.
The president will be in Las Vegas on Sunday for political events. Biden’s stop comes as Nevada completes early voting for the presidential primaries. Election day for the primaries is Tuesday, February 6.
He will speak to voters in the city’s Historic Westside section about what’s at stake in the election, his campaign said.
The LA swing will be the Bidens’ first trip to the region since December, when they were in town for a fundraiser.
First lady Jill Biden wears a pin in support of her husband, President Joe Biden, during a visit to the Biden campaign headquarters in Wilmington
Vice President Kamala Harris addresses campaign staff in Wilmington as President Biden listens
James Costos (center) posted a photo of the fundraiser he hosted at his Los Angeles home in the fourth quarter of 2023 with (from left) first lady Jill Biden, President Joe Biden, Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi and Costos’ partner Michael Smith on the Bidens’ latest visit to LA
His fundraisers during that three-day swing were filled with celebrities, including Steven Spielberg, Barbra Streisand, Shonda Rhimes, Rob Reiner and David Geffen.
President Biden faces only mild opposition to the Democratic nomination and most of the money raised will be used for the general election.
Biden’s focus on the campaign trail was on Trump. He has made defending democracy a central part of his re-election campaign and has repeatedly said Trump threatens the principles on which the country was founded.
