Biden Says He’s Planning Re-Elect Bid As Ireland Tour Concludes

(Bloomberg) -- US President Joe Biden concluded his tour through his ancestral home country of Ireland by declaring his intention to seek re-election, capping a journey of intense personal nostalgia with a look toward the next chapter of his political life.

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“My plan is to run again,” the president told reporters before boarding Air Force One as he began a journey back to the United States.

While his aides are still readying an official announcement, Biden’s plans to seek a second term crystallized over his Irish sojourn, where he spoke of his family’s 200-year path from Europe to the White House.

“The beginning, middle and end — that’s the Irish of it,” he said in the County Mayo town of Ballina, delivering an address outside St. Muredach’s Cathedral, built with bricks the White House said were sold by Biden’s great-great-great grandfather in the 1820s.

In Ballina, residents greeted the president with a festival-like atmosphere. He delivered remarks against a picturesque, campaign-style backdrop, on a green stage, flanked by Irish and American flags, as aides captured video and pictures for the rollout of his official reelection bid.

Earlier Friday, Biden visited Knock Shrine, a pilgrimage site for Catholics where locals in 1879 said they saw an apparition that included the Virgin Mary, and toured a hospice center that has paid tribute to his son, Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer in 2015.

Biden has multiple family ties to County Mayo, including through his great-great-great-grandparents Mary Mulderg and Edward Blewitt, who left there for the US in 1851 and helped design the layout of the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania, White House officials said.

Speaking of Edward Blewitt, Biden said that he doubts “he ever imagined that his great, great, great grandson would return 200 years later as president of the United States of America”

He drew applause when he invoked John F. Kennedy, the US’s only other Irish Catholic president.

Biden also cast his and the country’s lineage in the context of current issues confronting the world, including Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“We’re facing enormous challenges around the world. Challenges that are too great for any one country to solve alone. “Together let us take on these challenges of disease, food insecurity, which continue to devastate communities around the world, just as they did in Ireland generations ago,” Biden said.

During stops in Belfast and Dublin, Biden waded into diplomacy, saying US businesses are ready to invest in Northern Ireland if leaders there end their political paralysis, but skirted more serious issues such as a possible free trade agreement with the UK or the clean-tech subsidies in the US Inflation Reduction Act.

Biden’s trip has also been overshadowed by the most damaging exposure of US intelligence secrets in a decade. His remarks came after the US charged Jack Teixeira, a 21-year old Air National Guard member, Friday in connection with the leaks of highly classified spy documents that embarrassed the Biden administration and posed grave ramifications for US intelligence gathering.

Biden was scheduled to return to the US early Saturday.

--With assistance from Morwenna Coniam.

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