Biden says global leaders are terrified of Trump and quietly tell him, 'He can't win'

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — President Joe Biden tore into his predecessor on Tuesday, suggesting that global leaders are terrified of what Donald Trump 's return to the White House could do to democratic rule around the world.

“Every international meeting I attend,” Biden said, specifically referencing his whirlwind trip to Germany last week, “They pull me aside — one leader after the other, quietly — and say, ‘Joe, he can’t win.’ My democracy is at stake.”

His voice rising, Biden then asked if “America walks away, who leads the world? Who? Name me a country.”

The comments came during what was supposed to be a rather staid speech on health care in New Hampshire. They were a dose of unfiltered politics at an event otherwise focused on Biden’s policy legacy with the race to replace him just two weeks from concluding. And they made clear that the president also sees not having Trump succeed him as an important piece of how he might go down in history.

After the speech, Biden went to a campaign office to support New Hampshire Democratic candidates and continued his broadsides against Trump, even saying at one point, “We’ve got to lock him up.” Some supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris — who replaced Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket in July — have yelled that during her rallies, though such chants actually have their origin with Trump supporters demanding jail time for his 2016 opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Biden evoking it drew applause from those assembled at the campaign office, but Biden quickly added: "Politically lock him up. Lock him out, that's what we have to do."

Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Biden “just admitted the truth: he and Kamala’s plan all along has been to politically persecute their opponent President Trump because they can’t beat him fair and square.”

Biden didn't mention Harris much during his comments, though he noted that she'd been endorsed by some high-profile Republicans. That includes former Rep. Liz Cheney, the GOP's onetime No. 3 in the House and daughter of ex-Vice President Dick Cheney. Instead, Biden continued to focus on Trump, slamming him for being proud about being friends with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and joking that Trump “believes in the free press like I believe I can climb Mt. Everest.”

He said Trump and supporters of his “Make America Great Again” movement have “anti-democratic” attitudes toward the way the Constitution functions and “virtually no regard” for it.

“Think about what happens if Donald Trump were to win this election," Biden said, adding, “He’s not joking about it, he’s deadly earnest” and "It’s a serious, serious problem."

“We must win," Biden said.

Biden was in New Hampshire's capital of Concord with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the last candidate he beat to win the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. They both appeared at Concord Community College to trumpet the Department of Health and Human Services finding that almost 1.5 million Medicare enrollees saved nearly $1 billion on prescription drugs during the first half of the year.

Much of those savings came as a result of a cap on out-of-pocket drug costs created by the sweeping climate and health care law that the Biden administration helped carry through Congress in 2022. It put an annual maximum of $3,500 that recipients of Medicare, the government's health insurance coverage plans for seniors, pay for their prescriptions while making recommended vaccines for older Americans, like immunization for shingles, free.

Biden said that seniors aren't the only ones benefitting from the savings: “It's also saving taxpayers billions of dollars."

Next year, the drug cost cap for Medicare recipients falls to $2,000 per year, which will save some of the sickest Americans more. But the change has come at a price for others – it’s contributed to rising drug plan premiums that the government has tried to keep down by paying insurers billions of dollars from the Medicare trust fund. Still, some insurers have raised plan prices significantly – or pulled plans from markets.

The legislation is expected to deliver major savings in other ways, though, for taxpayers and Medicare enrollees in the long term.

For the first time ever, the federal government will negotiate the price of 10 of Medicare’s costliest drugs. The negotiated list prices, announced in August, will take effect in 2026. Taxpayers spend more than $50 billion yearly on the 10 drugs, which include popular blood thinners Xarelto and Eliquis and diabetes drugs Jardiance and Januvia.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that Medicare drug pricing negotiations will save taxpayers $3.7 billion in the first year.

But his championing of lower drug prices was overshadowed by the warnings Biden offered about Trump.

“No president has ever been like this guy. He’s a genuine threat to our democracy.”

—-

Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Amanda Seitz and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.

President Joe Biden, center left, is escorted by Col. Paul Pawluk, Vice Commander, 89th Airlift Wing, center right, as he walks from Marine One before boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez)

President Joe Biden, left, is escorted by Col. Paul Pawluk, Vice Commander, 89th Airlift Wing, right, as he walks from Marine One before boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez)

Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-N.H., speaks before President Joe Biden arrives to deliver remarks on lowering the cost of prescription drugs, at NHTI Concord Community College, Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024, in Concord, N.H. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

President Joe Biden delivers remarks on lowering the cost of prescription drugs, at NHTI Concord Community College, Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024, in Concord, N.H. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

President Joe Biden delivers remarks on lowering the cost of prescription drugs, at NHTI Concord Community College, Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024, in Concord, N.H. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

MIAMI, Florida (AP) — Democratic nominee Kamala Harris on Tuesday said she would work to bring more funds to community banks to help Latino men secure small business loans, while Republican Donald Trump's economic roundtable aimed at Latino voters devolved into a tirade of insults against his opponent.

Harris said in an interview with Telemundo that “we need to construct a strong economy that supports the working class.”

“I know that Hispanic men often have more difficulty securing loans from banks because of their connections and the fact that things aren’t necessarily set up so that they will qualify," she said in an interview in English that was translated into Spanish. "For that reason, I’m focused on seeing what we can do to bring more capital to community banks that better understand the community so we can give them that kind of loans.”

In response to Trump's claims that she was a socialist, she said: “I'm a capitalist. I'm a pragmatic capitalist.”

Trump, meanwhile, described Harris as “lazy," railed against green energy and talked about “extreme" presidential power during remarks at his golf club in Doral, a Miami suburb.

Insisting President Joe Biden did not need congressional approval to curb illegal immigration, he said: “As president, you have tremendous — it’s called extreme power. You have extreme power."

Trump also continued to hammer Harris as “low IQ” and invoked a racist trope, calling her “lazy as hell” for not holding any public events Tuesday. She was in Washington for meetings and was scheduled for TV interviews with Telemundo and NBC after more than two straight weeks of campaigning.

“Who the hell takes off when you have 14 days left?” he asked.

The Trump and Harris campaigns see what could be an election-deciding opportunity with Latino men, who could swing the outcome in states such as Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada if their traditional support for Democrats erodes. Trump believes he’s made inroads among Latino men. Harris’ team is seeking to shore up support within the same group with the election just two weeks away.

The effort sets up a question of whether memories of a Trump presidency or the promise of new policies under Harris will do more to energize Latino voters.

”We are very confident that these policies resonate because we’ve seen them resonate in speeches and focus groups,” said Matt Barreto, a Harris campaign pollster. “It speaks to Latino men in particular about being successful and achieving the American dream.”

In 2020, AP VoteCast found that 9% of voters nationwide identified as Latino, and 63% of them backed Biden in the election. That race was defined broadly by the pandemic that shut down much of the country, whereas this year’s race has issues such as the economy, immigration, abortion rights and democracy at the forefront.

Harris said she would work to double the number of registered apprenticeships. She is stressing how she would remove college degree requirements for certain federal government jobs and encourage private employers to do likewise. Harris also wants to provide forgivable loans worth up to $20,000 each to 1 million small businesses.

During Trump's event, he sat after his opening remarks as elected officials and business leaders who are Latino praised the economy during his administration, thanking him specifically for tax cuts he signed in 2017.

Later, he claimed that he had recently seen a solar field “that looked like it took up half the desert.”

“It’s all steel and glass and wires. And it looks like hell,” he says. “You see rabbits, they get caught in it.” Trump often rails against wind power, claiming the turbines “kill all the birds” and confuse whales.

At the close of the event, Latino faith leaders prayed over Trump, his head bowed as some placed their hands on his shoulders. Guillermo Maldonado, senior pastor of King Jesus International Ministry, said during the prayer that "there’s a higher assignment for him to finish with this nation.”

Both campaigns were jockeying for an edge with the increasingly diverse electorate in the closing weeks of the campaign. Harris has also focused on Black men, to whom she also pitched the forgivable loans for small businesses. She went on the podcast “Call Her Daddy” to appeal to younger women, while Trump has appeared on podcasts to target younger men.

In a close race, the Harris campaign is betting that Latino men are getting more attuned to policy specifics as the election draws closer.

Based on focus groups, Barreto said the Harris campaign found that Latino men in particular wanted access to apprenticeships that could give people without college degrees access to a financially stable career.

The latest Labor Department figures show there are 641,044 registered apprenticeships, an increase from the Trump administration, when apprenticeships peaked in 2020 at 569,311. Doubling that figure, as Harris has proposed, would put the total number of apprenticeships at roughly 1.2 million over four years.

Latino men also expressed a need for access to capital and credit to start companies, as the Treasury Department reported on Oct. 10 that Latino business ownership is up 40% over pre-pandemic levels and could keep climbing with better financing options.

Harris' running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will be on Univision’s “El Bueno, La Mala, y El Feo,” a syndicated radio show, this week, while Harris' husband, Doug Emhoff, will be interviewed this week by Univision’s nationally syndicated afternoon radio program “El Free-Guey Show.” Emhoff will also be interviewed by Alex “El Genio” Lucas on Nueva Network Radio.

Trump hopes to convince Latinos that they can trust a fellow businessman such as himself, even as he's also called for the mass deportation of immigrants in the country illegally.

“Hispanic people — they say you can’t generalize, but I think you can — they have wonderful entrepreneurship and they have — oh, do you have such energy. Just ease up a little bit, OK? Ease up,” Trump said at an Oct. 12 event. “You have great ambition, you have great energy, very smart, and you really do like natural entrepreneurs.”

Boak reported from Washington. Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa. Associated Press writers Adriana Gomez Licon and Stephany Matat in Miami and Kevin Freking and Alana Durkin Richer in Washington also contributed to this report.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., attend a campaign event Monday, Oct. 21, 2024, in Brookfield, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris departs Air Force Two at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Monday, Oct. 21, 2024, on return to Washington after several days on the campaign trail. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)

Supporters cheer before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Greensboro Coliseum, Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024, in Greensboro, N.C. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Supporters cheer before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Greensboro Coliseum, Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024, in Greensboro, N.C. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Latino leaders pray with Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump as he participates in a Latino leader roundtable, Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024 in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Participants pray for Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump during a roundtable with Latino leaders, Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024 in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump participates in a roundtable with Latino leaders Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024, in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump participates in a roundtable with Latino leaders Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024 in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump participates in a roundtable with Latino leaders, Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024 in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump participates in a roundtable with Latino leaders Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024 in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

FILE - This combination of photos shows Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump, left, and Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris during an ABC News presidential debate at the National Constitution Center, Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a faith event at the Concord Convention Center, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024, in Concord, N.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., attend a campaign event Monday, Oct. 21, 2024, in Brookfield, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)