An Overjoyed Biden in Ireland Stops Just Short of 2024 Announcement
- President’s tour of Ireland traces his family roots, heritage
- Biden touts perseverance at 80 as he weighs reelection bid
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President Joe Biden’s return to Ireland unleashed a wellspring of reflection and parable, even for a man prone to both. And while he stopped short of an announcement, the lessons of Ireland hang over his next decision: a bid for reelection next year at age 81.
His trip saw perfunctory formal events overshadowed by a more personal schedule — visits to touchstones of the Biden family history, steeped in themes of Irish rise, struggle and ritual. Yet the pomp and circumstance also ceded international attention to the most damaging and embarrassing US intelligence leak in a decade, one that the president sought to downplay and that culminated in an arrest Thursday.