While President Joe Biden has offered his first official caveat of health on a potential 2024 reelection campaign, former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said he will have to show more stamina on the campaign trail in 2024.
''Lucky for Joe — or unlucky for Joe — he won't be able to remain in the basement,'' McEnany said Thursday on Fox News' ''The Five.'' ''I mean, America has woken up to what it's like when you elect a president who hid from the American people.''
Amid the rise of omicron and potentially devastating COVID-19 infections across the U.S., McEnany quipped that Biden also was permitted to hide his ''secret COVID plan.''
''This is the first time he's kind of caveatted his answer [on if he] will run again,'' McEnany said. ''This time he had that nuance of his health. And what's fascinating is the members of his own administration refused to shut down talk of him not running.''
McEnany added taht Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg might have tipped the administration's hand on the likelihood that Biden, 79, the oldest president elected and the oldest sitting president in U.S. history, will actually run again.
Buttigieg said he had not thought about running, McEnany added, but he should have said: ''No, my boss is Joe Biden, I work for Joe Biden. I fully expect President Joe Biden to run and be reelected.''
The remarks came one day after Biden told ABC News he has no plans not to run.
''I am a great respecter of fate,'' Biden told ABC News on Wednesday. ''Fate has intervened in my life many, many times. If I'm in the health I'm in now — I'm in good health — then in fact I would run again.''
Biden smiled and shot back at ABC News' David Muir in the interview that the ''prospect'' of a Trump rematch would make the likelihood even more.
''You're trying to tempt me now,'' Biden said. ''Sure, why would I not run against Donald Trump if he were the nominee?
''That'll increase the prospect of running.''
Biden's eldest son Beau, 46, died from brain cancer May 30, 2015, when Joe Biden was vice president. Also, during his time as a senator, Joe Biden required surgery for two brain aneurysms. The first aneurysm had ruptured, putting his life at risk in the late 1980s.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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