Joe Biden often blunders. On foreign policy issues, this has repeatedly called the National Security Council into action to sweep up the pieces. Sometimes it was about the fact that the American president was carried away by the remark that Vladimir Putin could not remain in power. Sometimes it was about the statement that Taiwan makes its own decisions about its independence. His apparatus immediately corrected the situation: No, Washington is not seeking regime change in Moscow. And: No, America's one-China policy remains. Nothing has changed.

Sofia Dreisbach

Political correspondent for North America, based in Washington.

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Majid Sattar

Political correspondent for North America, based in Washington.

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In one question, however, Biden recently demonstrated a remarkable communicative discipline. When Donald Trump was briefly taken into custody in New York in early April and brought before the magistrate, journalists in the White House repeatedly called on the president to comment on his predecessor's criminal case. Biden always replied that he would not comment on the matter. He knew that any statement would serve as proof to Trump that it was a "political prosecution." The president has no interest in promoting this narrative.

But Biden does have an interest that he cannot express either: that the New York trial and presumably further charges help Trump, who has long since styled himself as a victim of political justice, in the Republican primaries. One thing the president does not hide: Nothing better could happen to him than an opposing candidate Trump, he said after the congressional elections last year in one of his rare press conferences in the White House. In doing so, Biden anticipated what is to become official this Tuesday: he is seeking a second term in the White House in 2024.

Biden hesitated for a long time

Exactly four years after entering the Democratic primaries for the presidential nomination, Biden wants to officially ring in his re-election campaign in a video. He has delayed the step for a long time. Actually, he had announced in November last year that he would announce his decision at the beginning of this year – after talks with his family.

Various circumstances prevented him from doing so. First of all, there was the file affair: improperly stored classified information had also been found in Biden's former offices. Since a special investigator is investigating Trump in a comparable case, Biden waited.

Later it was said that there was no need to hurry. After all, there are no serious challengers in his own party. So far, only Marianne Williamson, an author of esoteric books who was briefly part of the field of candidates in 2020, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a shrill anti-vaxxer and son of the former New York senator, have each declared their candidacy.

Now, however, the time has come for Biden to formally announce his candidacy. If the president were to delay the announcement any further, it might be in the summer, when the budget dispute with the congressional Republicans over raising the debt ceiling comes to a showdown and presumably bad news is expected in connection with the investigation into his son Hunter.