DALLAS — President Joe Biden has brought his re-election campaign to North Texas on Wednesday for a fundraiser following a stop through the Sun Belt where he has been trying to court Latino voters.
Air Force One landed at DFW Airport on Wednesday evening.
The president has two private campaign receptions with trial lawyers in North Texas. The presidential motorcade will be getting on the road during rush hour, likely exacerbating traffic is some areas.
Air Force One will depart from DFW Airport mid-morning on Thursday bound for Houston.
It is unusual that Air Force One is landing at DFW Airport and not at Dallas Love Field. The last time a U.S. President used North Texas' large international airport was July 2014, when President Barack Obama visited.
The White House often uses Dallas Love Field because it has a number of Fixed-Base Operators - or FBOs - that maintain private terminals on the east side of the air field. DFW Airport is a much busier airport without those. Still, DFW has plenty of room to park the president's 747 - likely on the south side of Terminal D, which is on the west side of the airfield.
On Tuesday, President Biden sought personally to reengage voters in Nevada and Arizona who helped power his winning coalition in 2020 by drawing contrasts with Republican challenger Donald Trump on veterans, job creation, foreign policy and other issues.
Biden told supporters at a campaign office in Reno, Nevada, that he and Trump have a “different value set" and he criticized Trump for comments he's made about veterans and others.
“I never heard a president say the things that he has said,” Biden said. He said millions of jobs disappeared during Trump's presidency and that the Republican doesn't understand foreign policy or U.S. national security needs.
Biden said Washoe County, where Reno is located, and Nevada are “really, really, really critical” for the November election. Nevada is among the roughly half-dozen battlegrounds that will determine the next president, and Washoe is the lone swing county in the state.
“We're going to beat him again," Biden said of Trump.
Afterward, Biden flew to Las Vegas to promote his administration's housing policies, including new proposals to eliminate various fees to lower costs for homeowners and renters. He also called on the National Association of Realtors to follow through on a recent agreement to allow home buyers and sellers to negotiate commissions lower than the customary 5% to 6%.
Biden planned a second campaign appearance later Tuesday in Phoenix in a critical swing county paired with an event Wednesday to discuss his support of the computer chip manufacturing sector.
The Reno appearance coincided with the launch of Latinos con Biden-Harris (Spanish for Latinos with Biden-Harris). Campaign ads ran in English, Spanish and Spanglish, a blend of the two languages, as did two Spanish-language radio interviews with the president. Biden is also emphasizing his pro-union, pro-abortion rights message during the trip.
“The Latino community is critical to the value set we have," Biden said on “El Bueno, la Mala y el Feo” ("The Good, the Bad and the Ugly") on Univision Radio. “I plan on working like the devil to earn your support.”
In the interview, Biden turned questions about immigration into an indictment of Trump for calling migrants “animals” and saying immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the U.S. Biden also noted Trump’s pledge to carry out mass deportations if given another term.
“We have to stop this guy, we can’t let this happen,” Biden said. “We are a nation of immigrants.”
Biden’s push with Latino voters is part of the campaign’s broader efforts to lay the groundwork to reengage various constituencies that will be critical to his reelection bid. That effort is all the more crucial as key parts of Biden's base, such as Black and Hispanic adults, have become increasingly disenchanted with his performance in office.
In an AP-NORC poll conducted in February, 38% of U.S. adults approved of how Biden was handling his job. Nearly 6 in 10 Black adults (58%) approved, compared to 36% of Hispanic adults. Black adults are more likely than white and Hispanic adults to approve of Biden, but that approval has dropped in the three years since Biden took office.