First lady Jill Biden indicated that President Biden will run for a second term, giving one of the strongest nods toward a 2024 bid from the president’s inner circle.
“He says he’s not done,” Biden told The Associated Press in an interview in Kenya on Friday. “He’s not finished what he’s started. And that’s what’s important.”
“How many times does he have to say it for you to believe it?” she added.
Biden has said that he intends to run for reelection but has not yet announced official plans. Biden’s former chief of staff Ron Klain, a longtime close confidant of the president’s, also gave a strong nod recently when he said he will be by the president’s side when he runs again.
When asked if she has the deciding vote on Biden’s 2024 plans, the first lady, who is considered one of his closest advisers, said “of course he’ll listen to me because we’re a married couple.”
“He makes up his own mind, believe me,” she added.
Biden is expected to make an official decision in the coming months but has made other nods to a reelection bid; in his State of the Union address, the president said about a dozen times that he wants to “finish the job.”
An official announcement in the spring would align with most of the president’s recent predecessors, including former President Obama who announced his reelection bid in early April 2011.
The first lady is on a five-day trip to Africa with her granddaughter, Naomi Biden. They arrived in Kenya on Friday after visiting Namibia on Wednesday and Thursday. Biden is the third U.S. official to visit Africa this year after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
Her trip comes after the president announced at the end of the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in December that he will travel to sub-Saharan Africa in 2023. He said at the time that there will also be visits to Africa from other officials, including his wife.