After months of speculation and hints, former Vice President Joe Biden officially announced his bid for a 2020 presidency.
In a video announcing his run which was released on Thursday (April 25), Biden states that he wants to fix the issues in the country. What inspired him to run was Donald Trump’s response to the deadly 2017 white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, Va.
“In that moment, I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had ever seen in my lifetime,” Biden says. The 76-year-old is also a former Delaware senator.
“I believe history will look back on four years of [Trump] and all he embraces as an aberrant moment in time,” he continues in the video. “But if we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation — who we are — and I cannot stand by and watch that happen.”
In 2015, Biden stated that he would not be running for President, as he wanted to focus on healing from the loss of his son, Beau, to cancer. However, NPR reports that his family–especially his grandchildren– have “prodded” him to run.
He joins Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren as politicians who have thrown their hat into the ring for a Democratic nomination.
