PHILADELPHIA — Before speaking at a rally in a half-filled school gymnasium on Wednesday, President Biden lashed out at a reporter who asked him whether he planned to serve a full second term or hand over power to Vice President Kamala Harris by January 2029.
“Are you OK?” the 81-year-old president yelled across the runway at Philadelphia International Airport, pointing at his head.
“Are you OK? Are you hurt?” Biden asked the reporter who asked the question.
The reporter, unable to hear the answer clearly, asked if he could “come closer” to the president.
“I said are you OK? Did you fall on your head or something?” Biden shouted again from the runway, drawing laughter from his entourage, including Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pennsylvania).
Republicans often argue that voting for Biden is the same as voting for Harris to take over the Oval Office because Biden would be 86 if he serves out his term, and polls have shown that most Americans are concerned about whether Biden can serve an eight-year term in office.
Ahead of his rematch against former President Donald Trump on November 5, Biden held a rally targeting black voters with Harris (59) at his hometown Girard College.
“If he [Trump] “If he wins a second term, he will go even further,” Harris said in introductory remarks.
“It matters who sits in the White House.”
The president slammed his predecessor as “clearly out of his mind” and told a crowd during Black Lives Matter protests after the killing of George Floyd in May 2020 that Trump “wanted to tear gas you.”
At one point, Biden wondered what Trump would have done “if Black Americans had stormed the Capitol” during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
“Kamala and I became President and Vice President because Black Americans voted for us!” Biden declared, vowing that in his second term he would “sign the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and make Roe v. Wade the law of the land again.”
Biden campaign officials estimated that the Girard College event drew 1,000 attendees, filling about half of the school’s gym’s floor and seating area.
It was not immediately clear why attendance at the event was limited, but other public events featuring Biden have been met with heckling denouncements of his support for Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip.
