Former vice president Joe Biden said on Tuesday he would decide whether he would run for president by January.
While speaking at a forum in Bogota, Colombia, Biden talked about politics, President Donald Trump and the potential for a presidential run in 2020. He told CNN’s Juan Carlos López, who was moderating the forum, that while polling data shows he could beat Trump, it might not mean anything.
“I know I have to make up my mind and I have to do it by January,” Biden said.
He said that after the midterm elections in November he would hold an “altar call” and gauge whether a run would be successful, both in terms of financial and overall support.
A poll last month showed Biden was the early favorite for the Democratic ticket in 2020, beating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. , and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
Biden was the choice of 32 percent of Democrats in a Harvard CAPS/Harris June poll, which was obtained by The Hill.
Also during Tuesday’s forum, Biden used the opportunity to shame the comments Trump made at a Monday press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin where he appeared to accept Putin’s denial that Russia didn’t meddle in the 2016 election.
“I think the press conference was beneath the office of the president,” he said. “And I think it did us great damage internationally.”
He added that he hadn’t seen “such behavior from a president of the United States on an international forum that diminishes the United States” and said he applauded those Republican lawmakers who spoke out against the president.
On Tuesday, Trump walked back some of his comments at the press conference, saying he misstated the word “wouldn’t” for “would” when he said he couldn’t see any reason why Russia “would” have been involved in meddling the U.S. presidential election.
“I said the word ‘would’ instead of ‘wouldn’t,'” Trump explained, speaking at the White House more than 24 hours after his news conference with Putin began drawing fire from allies and critics alike. “The sentence should have been, ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.'”
Contributing: John Fritze, USA TODAY
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