Tag: Joe Biden

  • Joe Biden appreciates Pakistan’s efforts in tackling terrorism

    Joe Biden appreciates Pakistan’s efforts in tackling terrorism

    President of the United States (US) Joe Biden has highlighted the significance of Washington’s relations with Pakistan for “regional stability and security” after he received a Letter of Credence from the Pakistan Ambassador to the US, Rizwan Saeed Shiekh.

    At a ceremony at Blair House in Washington DC, Biden said, “The relationship between our two countries remains important for regional stability and security. We appreciate US-Pakistan cooperation on countering terrorist threats,” a statement released by the Pakistan embassy in the US read.

    “The United States will continue to stand with Pakistan to tackle the most pressing global and regional challenges of our time,” he added.

    The US President’s statement comes at a crucial time when the US imposed sanctions on three Chinese companies and a Chinese research institute that had assisted Pakistan in developing the Shaheen Three and Ababeel missile systems.

    During a press briefing from Washington yesterday, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller had stated, “We have been clear and consistent about our concerns with Pakistan’s ballistic missile programme for many years.”

  • Kamala Harris ‘will not be silent’ on suffering in Gaza

    Kamala Harris ‘will not be silent’ on suffering in Gaza

    United States Vice President Kamala Harris, who is now running for candidacy in the upcoming presidential election, has asserted that she will not remain “silent” on the suffering in Gaza.

    “What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating. The images of dead children and desperate hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time,” Harris said while speaking to reporters following her meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington DC.

    At the same time, she maintained that “Israel has a right to defend itself”, deeming Hamas as a “brutal terrorist organisation” that led to the “war” and had carried out ‘“horrific acts of sexual violence”.

    Harris later added that “We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies [in Gaza]. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering and I will not be silent.”

    She also urged the creation of a Palestinian state, further calling for Netanyahu and Hamas to accord a ceasefire and hostage release deal to end a war that has killed “far too many” civilians.

    “As I just told Prime Minister Netanyahu, it is time to get this deal done,” she said.

  • Biden tests positive for Covid, fueling health worries

    Biden tests positive for Covid, fueling health worries

    US President Joe Biden tested positive for Covid with mild symptoms Wednesday, shortly after conceding he would consider dropping his reelection bid if doctors diagnosed him with a serious medical condition.

    The 81-year-old Democrat gave reporters the thumbs up and said “I feel good” as he cut short a trip to Las Vegas and flew to his beach home in Delaware to go into isolation, which will take him off the campaign trail for days.

    Biden thanked well-wishers on X, adding that “I will be isolating as I recover, and during this time I will continue to work to get the job done for the American people.”

    The infection comes at a critical moment for Biden’s campaign, with the president seeking to show he is up to the job after a disastrous debate performance against rival Donald Trump sparked concerns about his health and calls from some Democrats for him to step aside.

    It is also the latest development in a tumultuous few days in an already frenetic White House race that saw Trump survive an assassination attempt at a campaign rally.

    Biden was forced to cancel a speech to a union representing Latino workers who will be crucial for his election bid, having attended a campaign event earlier in the day and given a radio interview.

    His spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden was vaccinated and boosted, was now taking the Covid medication Paxlovid and “continues to carry out the full duties of the office while in isolation.”

    White House doctor Kevin O’Connor said Biden had complained of suffering from a runny nose, a cough and “general malaise,” but that “his symptoms remain mild.”

    Biden was seen walking from his limousine to his plane at Las Vegas without a mask. “Good,” he said when asked how he felt, “I feel good.”

    Janet Murguia, the president of the Unidos union for Latino workers, told the crowd about the diagnosis shortly before the White House announcement.

    ‘Pass the torch’

    People waiting for the speech said Biden’s health did not worry them despite the Covid diagnosis.

    “I think he’s strong and he’s going to recover soon,” Anne Vilagut told AFP.

    But Biden’s illness comes as concerns over the fitness of the oldest US president in US history reach fever pitch.

    Asked what could make him rethink his presidential bid, Biden told the Black media outlet BET in an interview taped Tuesday in Las Vegas: “If I had some medical condition that emerged, if somebody, if the doctors came and said ‘you’ve got this problem, that problem.’”

    Biden has so far refused to drop out, and blamed his debate debacle, when he appeared tired and confused, on a bad cold and jet lag.

    But US broadcaster ABC News reported Wednesday that Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had told Biden over the weekend that it would be “better for the country if he were to bow out,” in what would be a fatal blow.

    A spokesperson for Schumer played down the report, saying: “Unless ABC’s source is Senator Chuck Schumer or President Joe Biden the reporting is idle speculation.”

    “Leader Schumer conveyed the views of his caucus directly to President Biden.”

    The Washington Post and New York Times meanwhile reported that both Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries had warned Biden that his candidacy puts the party’s electoral prospects at risk.

    White House spokesman Andrew Bates pushed back in a statement, saying: “The President told both leaders he is the nominee of the party, he plans to win, and looks forward to working with both of them to pass his 100 days agenda to help working families.”

    Adding further pressure, CNN reported that former House speaker Nancy Pelosi privately told Biden he cannot win and could harm Democrats’ chances of recapturing the lower chamber of Congress.

    Earlier on Wednesday, Representative Adam Schiff of California became the highest-profile Democrat to publicly urge Biden to “pass the torch.”

    “A second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy, and I have serious concerns about whether the President can defeat Donald Trump in November,” Schiff said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times.

    Biden insists that Democratic voters support him, but a poll by the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research said Wednesday that nearly two-thirds want him to step aside.

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    © Agence France-Presse

  • Iran rejects accusations implicating it in plot to kill Trump

    Iran rejects accusations implicating it in plot to kill Trump

    Iran on Wednesday rejected what it called “malicious” accusations by US media implicating it in a plot to kill former US president Donald Trump.

    CNN reported Tuesday that US authorities received intelligence from a “human source” weeks ago on an alleged Iranian plot against the former president, prompting his protection to be boosted. Other US outlets also reported the alleged plot.

    CNN said the alleged plot was not linked to Saturday’s shooting at a Trump campaign rally in Pennsylvania, in which the former president was wounded and a supporter killed.

    The US National Security Council said it had been “tracking Iranian threats against former Trump administration officials for years” after Tehran threatened revenge for the 2020 killing of Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike in neighbouring Iraq.

    Iran’s mission to the United Nations called the accusations “unsubstantiated and malicious”.

    Foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said Iran “strongly rejects any involvement in the recent armed attack against Trump”.

    He added however that Iran remains “determined to prosecute Trump over his direct role in the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani”.

    Soleimani headed the foreign operations arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, overseeing Iranian military operations across the Middle East.

    Trump ordered his killing in a drone strike just outside Baghdad airport.

  • Trump shot at in assassination attempt

    Trump shot at in assassination attempt

    US President hopeful Donald Trump says he has been shot in the ear at a political rally, saying he heard a “whizzing sound” and feeling a “bullet ripping through skin”

    At the scene, a male attacker was shot and killed by a member of the Secret Service after the apparent assassination attempt on Trump at the event in Pennsylvania.

    The attacker also killed one and critically injured two others at the rally.

    A witness told BBC they saw a man with a rifle crawling on a nearby roof before the shots rang out.

    Trump is safe, but many are saying the attempt on his life will help seal his win in the presidential race against Joe Biden.

  • ‘I know how to do this job’: Biden seeks to repair debate damage with fiery speech

    ‘I know how to do this job’: Biden seeks to repair debate damage with fiery speech

    A fired-up Joe Biden came out swinging on Friday as he tried to make up for a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump, insisting he was the right man to win November’s US presidential election.

    Biden’s appearance at a campaign rally in the battleground state of North Carolina came amid rumblings in his alarmed Democratic Party about replacing the 81-year-old as their nominee — and shortly before the nation’s most influential newspaper urged him to step aside.

    “I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to,” Biden admitted to supporters in unusually confessional remarks.

    “But I know how to tell the truth. I know how to do this job,” he said to huge cheers, vowing “when you get knocked down, you get back up”.

    Biden’s team was in damage-control mode after Thursday’s debate when he often hesitated, tripped over words and lost his train of thought — exacerbating fears about his ability to serve another term.

    He had hoped to allay qualms about his advanced age, and to expose Trump as a habitual liar.

    But the president failed to counter his bombastic rival, who offered up a largely unchallenged reel of false or misleading statements about everything from the economy to immigration.

    On Friday, Biden delivered the lines Democrats wished they had heard in the televised debate.

    “Did you see Trump last night? My guess is he set — and I mean this sincerely — a new record for the most lies told in a single debate,” Biden said.

    “Donald Trump is a genuine threat to this nation. He’s a threat to our freedom. He’s a threat to our democracy. He’s literally a threat for everything America stands for.”

    Trump also returned to the campaign trail on Friday, speaking at a rally in Virginia and launching his familiar attacks on Biden in a rambling speech.

    “It’s not his age, it’s his competence,” Trump said.

    “The question every voter should be asking themselves today is not whether Joe Biden can survive a 90-minute debate performance, but whether America can survive four more years of crooked Joe Biden.”

    A new Democrat?

    Trump addressed the chances of Biden being replaced by another candidate, saying, “I don’t really believe that because he does better in polls than any of the (other) Democrats.”

    So far, no senior Democratic figure has publicly called on Biden to withdraw, with most toeing a party line about sticking with the existing ticket.

    “I will never turn my back on President Biden,” California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has figured prominently on lists of possible replacement candidates, said immediately after the debate.

    Forcing a change in the ticket would be politically fraught, and Biden would have to decide himself to withdraw to make way for another nominee before the party convention next month.

    Biden overwhelmingly won the primary votes, and the party’s 3,900 delegates heading to the convention in Chicago are beholden to him.

    If he exits, the delegates would have to find a replacement.

    “Bad debate nights happen,” Biden’s former boss, Barack Obama, wrote on X. But the election is “still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself”.

    A logical — but not automatic — candidate to take Biden’s place would be his vice president, Kamala Harris, who also loyally defended his debate performance.

    The show of Democratic loyalty and Biden’s defiance in North Carolina were not enough for The New York Times, however.

    The daily newspaper slammed Biden’s campaign as a “reckless gamble” in the face of the threat posed by Trump, with its editorial board — which is separate from the newsroom — calling for the president to stand aside.

    The “greatest public service Mr. Biden can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election,” it said.

    Many election bettors, too, abandoned Biden, preferring to bet on Trump or other Democratic leaders.

    Before the debate, bettors on the platform Smarkets were giving Biden a 35 per cent chance of winning in November, but on Friday that figure dropped to below 20pc.

  • Biden seeks reset after debate flop rocks campaign

    Biden seeks reset after debate flop rocks campaign

    A badly wounded Joe Biden looked to get his reelection campaign back on track Friday after a debate performance that unnerved supporters and left allies of Donald Trump unable to conceal their glee.

    Democrats had hoped to see the president defiantly answering critics who say he is too old for a second term while hammering Trump on his criminal record and the threat they say he poses to democracy.

    Instead, many acknowledged, they got a faltering display from a candidate who sounded hoarse for much of the showdown, stumbled over words, pulled punches, often stared open-mouthed and looked confused.

    “There are no two ways about it — that was not a good debate for Joe Biden,” Democratic former White House communications chief Kate Bedingfield told host network CNN as the curtain came down on the match-up.

    David Axelrod, a senior advisor in Barack Obama’s administration, said Biden’s performance had “confirmed people’s fears” about an 81-year-old being too old for the Oval Office.

    The president, who had spent days in mock debates at his Camp David retreat, was scheduled to begin the clean-up Friday with his largest event of the campaign, in the battleground state of North Carolina.

    Facing tough questions over his performance and immediate future, he told reporters he had done “well” as he stopped off at an Atlanta Waffle House with First Lady Jill Biden after coming off stage.

    He added that he was croaking because of a “sore throat” and that, in any case, it is “hard to debate a liar.”

    Although Biden managed to pin down Trump on abortion rights and his role in the violence that marred the 2021 handover, he waited bafflingly long — almost 45 minutes — to bring up Trump’s felony convictions and other legal woes in any detail.

    He spoke under his breath and appeared at times to lose focus, pausing for several seconds after stumbling in the opening stages.

    Trump’s performance was far from accomplished — his verbal fusillades were littered with falsehoods and he dodged several times when asked what he would do about the opioid crisis ravaging middle-class families.

    He also refused to clearly commit to accepting the results of November’s election, playing into the narrative that he has little respect for democracy or the rule of law.

    CNN reported that while Biden made nine false or misleading statements, Trump made a staggering 30, including “egregious” falsehoods on abortion, the US Capitol insurrection, health care and NATO.

    But the Republican — who is countering Biden’s rally with an appearance of his own in Virginia on Friday — largely avoided the rhetorical landmines that exploded under Biden.

    At one point, the president bizarrely declared that “we finally beat Medicare,” as the discussion turned to funding the health insurance program for seniors.

    As the disappointment of Biden’s showing registered with Democrats, there was even talk of finding a new candidate before the Democratic convention in August.

    “There’s been a lot of chatter in our circles about Newsom,” one party strategist told political outlet The Hill — although California governor Gavin Newsom quickly shut down suggestions that he could take Biden’s place.

    In the Trump corner, pundits reveled at how the night turned out.

    Keith Nahigian, a Republican veteran of six campaigns who helped prepare multiple election candidates including John McCain for debates, told AFP that Biden’s performance was “the worst I’ve ever seen.”

    “Biden called for this debate a few months ago. He pushed for this debate. I think he just sunk his presidency,” he added.

    Ralph Reed, chairman of the conservative Faith and Freedom Coalition, compared the debate to a prize fight “that should have been stopped in the early rounds.”

  • Palestinian-US doctor walks out of Biden meeting in Gaza protest

    Palestinian-US doctor walks out of Biden meeting in Gaza protest

    Washington (AFP) – A Palestinian-American doctor said he walked out of a Ramadan event with President Joe Biden at the White House to show solidarity with the people of Gaza against Israel’s offensive.

    Thaer Ahmad, who traveled to Gaza earlier this year, told CNN he left the meeting between Biden and members of the Muslim community on Tuesday in protest at US “rhetoric” supporting Israel.

    “I let him know that I am from a community that’s reeling. We are grieving. Our heart is broken for what’s been taking place over the last six months,” Ahmad, an emergency doctor from Chicago, said he told the president.

    He said he then “let him know that out of respect for my community, out of respect for all of the people who have suffered, who have been killed in the process, I need to walk out of the meeting.”

    Biden “actually said that he understood,” he added.

    The White House said on Wednesday that Biden respected the doctor’s stance.

    “The president respects any American’s right to peacefully protest,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told a briefing. “He understands that this is a painful moment for many Americans.”

    Biden had downsized the traditional event to mark the Muslim holy month of Ramadan amid growing domestic anger over his support for Israel’s offensive in Gaza following October 7 attacks.

    Muslim leaders met the president but asked for there to be no fast-breaking dinner, with Biden holding only a small meal separately with Muslim White House staff.

    Tensions over Gaza soared further this week after an Israeli air strike killed seven employees of a US-based charity, World Central Kitchen, on Monday.

    Biden said on Tuesday he was “outraged” and accused Israel of not doing enough to protect aid workers or civilians, in one of his strongest statements since the war started.

    “I think you can sense the frustration in that statement yesterday,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

    But the White House said that Biden continued to support Israel’s “right to defend itself” and there were no plans to curb arms deliveries to the key US ally.

  • ‘Shame on you Biden’; Pro-Palestine protestors interrupt glamorous presidential fundraiser

    ‘Shame on you Biden’; Pro-Palestine protestors interrupt glamorous presidential fundraiser

    Pro-Palestine protesters interrupted President Joe Biden‘s conversation with his predecessors, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, at a glamorous fundraiser in New York for the Presidential re-election campaign.

    The disruption isn’t surprising, given that many of Biden’s events have seen protestors calling for a ceasefire in the war on Gaza. This time, according to a pool report, one of the protesters was yelling obscenities about a nuclear war with Russia. Other protesters interrupted over the situation in Gaza.
    Once the show began, Biden, Obama, and Clinton were each interrupted multiple times by Gaza protesters inside the hall, laying bare the unrest within the Democratic Party that hangs over the election.

    “Blood on your hands,” some yelled, at one point prompting Obama to snap back. “You can’t just talk and not listen. That’s what the other side does.”

    Video clips show pro-Palestinian demonstrators accosting people on the street in New York City after they attended the reelection fundraiser for US President Joe Biden.

    Biden exclaimed, “There are too many innocent victims, Israeli and Palestinian. We’ve got to get more food and medicine, supplies into the Palestinians. But we can’t forget, Israel is in a position where its very existence is at stake. You have to have all those people. They weren’t killed. They were massacred. They were massacred.” This enraged the protestors as they started calling out the President.

    “How dare you talk about the innocent deaths of Palestinians. Palestinians are dying right now because of your actions,” a protestor was seen yelling as he was taken into custody by the security.

    Another woman was seen shouting, “Shame on you Joe Biden”.

    A leading New York pro-Palestinian group, Within Our Lifetime, was among those organizing protests, billed as the “Flood Manhattan For Gaza” rally.
    The group issued a call to supporters ahead of the fundraiser, writing on X: “GENOCIDE JOE HAS GOT TO GO! Protesting genocide Joe, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton outside their democratic fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall!,” reports USA Today.

    In an interview with Al Jazeera, a protestor named Cheryl was seen saying, “I won’t be voting for Biden, for sure, I mean, even if he stopped the war right now, just for what the Palestinian people have suffered, I can’t”.

  • Didn’t call him, but wrote a letter: Biden tells Shehbaz they need to work together

    Didn’t call him, but wrote a letter: Biden tells Shehbaz they need to work together

    United States President Joe Biden, wrote a letter to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Friday in which he emphasised that Washington will “continue to stand with Pakistan” in confronting “most pressing global and regional challenges”.

    While Biden did not call the PM, this letter is the first official diplomatic correspondence between the two states. This holds significance for Pakistan because relations between the two nations have been tense ever since former Prime Minister Imran Khan publicly accused the US of launching a conspiracy in a bid to remove him in 2022.

    “The enduring partnership between our nations remains critical to ensuring the security of our people — and people around the world —and the United States will continue to stand with Pakistan to tackle the most pressing global and regional challenges of our time,” the letter read.
    Biden also talked about the US-Pakistan Green Alliance framework, the two countries would collaborate and strengthen their climate resilience and supporting Pakistan’s development from floods of 2022.

    “Together, we will continue to forge a strong partnership between our nations and close bond between our people,” the letter concluded.