Your trusted source

U.S. President Joe Biden told Rev. Al Sharpton that he will seek a second term in a private conversation at the White House last month, the civil rights leader informed his National Action Network staff in Washington later that day, NBC News reported.

“I’m going to do it again,” Biden said as he posed for a photograph with Sharpton, who is also an MSNBC host, in the Roosevelt Room, according to a NAN official who recounted Sharpton’s description. “I’m going.”

While Biden allies have said he will seek re-election, he has shied away from declaring that unequivocally, at least in part to avoid triggering campaign-finance reporting laws. His remarks to Sharpton at the tail end of a meeting with the leaders of several of the nation’s most prominent civil rights organizations represent a stronger assertion that he will be on the ballot again.

As Biden’s approval numbers have ticked upward in the last couple of months — from a low of 36.8 percent in the Real Clear Politics average of polls in late July to 42.1 percent now — talk of an alternative Democratic nominee has died down. The last sitting president to forgo a re-election campaign was Lyndon Johnson in 1968.