BIDEN SET TO ADDRESS US AS CLOCK TICKS ON PRESIDENCY

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US President Joe Biden, who has denied that he will be a lame duck for six months, will make an explanation for his decision to withdraw from the election in November in what may be his final statement from the Oval Office on Wednesday.

Even if Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are set to square off in the near future, Biden will maintain that he still has work to do despite his historic decision to withdraw.

The 81-year-old Democrat said on X that at the primetime televised event on Thursday at 8:00 p.m. (0000 GMT), he would talk about “what lies ahead and how I will finish the job for the American people.”

The eight- to 10-minute statement will be Biden’s first since withdrawing from the race on Sunday, in response to intense criticism after a dismal debate performance against Trump.

While he was spending time alone at his Delaware beach house with Covid, he announced his exit from the country and pledged to provide Americans with further information about his unexpected choice.

After an attempted assassination attempt on July 13, it has been just over a week since his last Oval Office speech. This is only his fourth speech as president overall, and it may be his final.

It will be difficult for Biden to convince Americans that he is not the same old man as Trump and Harris, who have both practically secured the Democratic presidential candidacy.

Republicans have demanded that Biden resign completely, arguing that he is unfit to be president if he isn’t even worthy of running for office again.

The seasoned Democrat is adamant that he still has a lot to contribute, focusing in particular on the economy and striking the elusive cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Biden has stated that a truce in Gaza is imminent when he meets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Thursday.

He would not be the first US president to chase a legacy-defining Middle East peace deal, after Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and even Donald Trump before him.

But in a sign of how quickly things are already moving on, Netanyahu will sit down separately Thursday with Harris — who was skipping his address to Congress on Wednesday due to a previously scheduled campaign trip.

Trump, meanwhile, said in a post on Truth Social that he will meet with the Israeli leader Friday at the Republican’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

With the clock ticking on his presidency, Biden said on X late Tuesday that it was “great to be back at the White House” after returning from Delaware, and that he had met his national security team for a briefing.

His decision to drop out has injected a huge dose of enthusiasm into a Democratic Party that had been plunged into chaos by the debate over his age.

An exuberant Harris was cheered to the rafters on Tuesday as she held a campaign rally in the battleground state of Wisconsin, her first since saying she had secured the delegates necessary for the nomination.

She could be nominated as soon as early August in a virtual vote by Democratic delegates ahead of the party’s convention in Chicago just over two weeks later.

For Harris the challenge will now be to maintain that enthusiasm — and then to translate it into ballot box success in November.

Trump is due to appear in Charlotte later Wednesday for his first rally since Harris became the de facto nominee.

He is expected to ramp up his attacks on her, as at least one national poll conducted after Biden’s exit showed Harris slightly ahead.

Meanwhile, the impact of Biden’s decision on Americans unenthused by the long slog between him and Trump was coming more into focus.

Non-profit voter registration group Vote.org said Wednesday that it had registered nearly 40,000 voters in the 48 hours after Biden’s bombshell announcement, an almost 700 per cent daily increase.

“That’s the largest number of new voters registered over a 48-hour period we’ve seen this entire cycle,” posted Vote.org CEO Andrea Hailey on X.