Biden says he might not be running for reelection if Trump wasn’t in the race

BOSTON — President Biden said Tuesday he is not sure he would be running for reelection if Donald Trump was not in the race.

“If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running. But we cannot let him win,” Biden said at a fundraiser in the Boston area.

The comments came as Biden has spoken in increasingly stark terms about the threat a second Trump term would pose to U.S. democracy. They also come as Biden, who turned 81 last month, has tried to downplay concerns in the Democratic Party about his age.

During fundraisers in the Boston area on Tuesday, Biden warned of the restrictions he said Trump would place on abortion and of Trump’s vow to try to repeal the Affordable Care Act, as well as accusing Trump and “his MAGA Republicans” with trying to destroy American democracy.

Biden also again raised the fact that Trump has called his political enemies “vermin,” saying the comments echoed the language used in Germany in the 1930s — a thinly veiled reference to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.

“I’ve been around in politics for a while and I never thought I’d run in an election like this,” Biden said Tuesday of what is shaping up to be a rematch of the 2020 presidential election. “This time we’re running an election denier-in-chief. Trump’s not even hiding the ball anymore.”

Amy B Wang reported from Washington.