President Biden said Thursday that former President Trump’s GOP primary win in Iowa earlier in the week meant nothing.
Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, coasted to victory in the Iowa caucuses, with news outlets declaring him the winner just 30 minutes after caucusing began.
“I don’t think Iowa means anything. The president got 50-some-thousand votes, the lowest number of votes anybody who’s won got. You know, this idea that he’s going to run away — he can think anyway he wants, let him make that judgement,” Biden said.
Trump secured about 51 percent of the vote in the caucuses, leading other Democrats including Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) to also argue that those margins don’t mean he had a big victory.
Biden was also asked by reporters Thursday about declining Arab and Muslim support for him. He responded by arguing that Trump wants to put a Muslim ban in place; the former president issued a travel ban on predominantly Muslim nations in his first days in office in 2017 and has vowed to reinstate one again if elected this year.
“Look, the president wants to put — the former president wants to put a ban on Arabs coming in the country. We’ll make sure that we understand who cares about the Arab population, number one. Number two, we’ve got a long way to go,” he said.
The White House has been under pressure from Democrats, progressives, and Arab and Muslim Americans to call for a cease-fire in Gaza. While Biden’s pro-Israel stance has been steadfast since the deadly Oct. 7 attacks, rifts between the U.S. and Israel have spilled into public view, and U.S. officials have increasingly called on Israel to soften its attacks in Gaza and focus on targeting Hamas while minimizing civilian casualties.
Biden’s comments Thursday came as he left the White House for North Carolina, a critical battleground state that Trump won in 2020 and 2016.
After Trump’s victory in Iowa, the Biden reelection campaign announced it raised more than $1.6 million in 24 hours. The builds on the more than $97 million it raised in the fourth quarter of 2023. It has $117 million it has on hand.
The New Hampshire primary is Tuesday, and Trump is currently leading in polls there. Nationally, the aggregation of polls kept by Decision Desk HQ and The Hill shows Trump with a lead of 1.1 percentage point over Biden in a hypothetical head-to-head contest.