Biden shrugs off Trump ballot controversy ahead of major ad blitz

President Joe Biden shrugged off the controversy over Donald Trump being on the 2024 ballot as a political action committee supporting the incumbent’s reelection announced plans for a record-shattering $250 million ad blitz.

Flashing a grin, Biden told reporters Tuesday he wasn’t sweating Trump’s constitutional battle to be permitted on the presidential ballot in the fall election.

“As far as I’m concerned, that’s fine,” Biden said as he left the White House for a fundraising trip to Florida.

He was set to hold fundraisers in Miami and suburban Fort Lauderdale as he builds his already bulging war chest for the expected fight with Trump.

Although Republicans have dominated statewide races in the Sunshine State, some top Democratic donors are urging Biden not to write off the state in the 2024 contest.

“I think we can win Florida,” Biden boasted to supporters in Jupiter, Florida.

Trump has had some success in state courts at turning back efforts to knock him off presidential primary ballots.

The U.S. Supreme Court will likely have the final say when it hears an appeal of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision that the 14th Amendment bars Trump from serving as president on the ground that he helped lead an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. That was the day his supporters stormed Congress as lawmakers met to certify the 2020 election results.

In December, Maine’s secretary of state deemed Trump ineligible for the state’s GOP primary ballot on the same grounds.

“The record establishes that Mr. Trump, over the course of several months and culminating on Jan. 6, 2021, used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power,” Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, said.

The White House has not commented on the effort to knock Trump off the ballot as Biden seeks to project confidence over his chances in a likely rematch against the 45th president.

Despite Biden’s dismal poll numbers, Democratic strategists believe he has a chance of defeating Trump if the former president is the GOP nominee, citing Trump’s widespread unpopularity among voters.

Biden’s what-me-worry approach came on the same day as a Democratic-leaning super PAC unveiled plans for the single biggest ad blitz in U.S. presidential election history to give him four more years.

The Future Forward group reserved a whopping $250 million in TV and digital ads across seven key battleground states, including massive spending in Democratic metro areas of Phoenix and Atlanta.

“The stakes of this election could not be higher, and by Election Day every battleground voter will know it,” said Chauncey McLean, the president of Future Forward. “We’ll run a … data-driven program of unprecedented scale to reelect Joe Biden.”

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