It will be the first time in 10 years that a president has landed at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport.
DALLAS — President Joe Biden made a reelection campaign stop in North Texas on Wednesday to raise funds, following a visit to the Sun Belt region aimed at garnering support from Latino voters.
Air Force One landed at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport on Wednesday evening.
The president will hold two private campaign receptions with his lawyers in North Texas, and his motorcade will depart during rush hour, which could cause heavy traffic congestion in some areas.
Air Force One is scheduled to depart Dallas-Fort Worth airport on Thursday morning for its journey to Houston.
It’s unusual for Air Force One to land at DFW rather than Dallas Love Field: the last time a US president used the North Texas airport’s major international airport was in July 2014, when Barack Obama visited.
The White House uses Dallas Love Field a lot because it has a number of fixed base operators (FBOs) with private terminals on the east side of the airport, not DFW, which is much busier. Still, DFW has enough space to park the president’s 747, likely south of Terminal D on the west side of the airport.
President Biden on Tuesday sought personally to re-engage with voters in Nevada and Arizona who helped him win the 2020 presidential election, highlighting his differences with Republican opponent Donald Trump on issues including veterans, job creation and foreign policy.
Biden told supporters at his campaign office in Reno, Nevada, that he and Trump have “different values” and criticized Trump’s remarks about military veterans and others.
“I’ve never heard a president say the things he said,” Biden said. He said millions of jobs have been lost during Trump’s term and that the Republican president doesn’t understand foreign policy or the national security needs of the United States.
Biden said Washoe County, home to Reno, and Nevada are “really, really, really important” in the November election. Nevada is one of about six battleground states that will decide the next president, and Washoe County is the only one in the state.
“We’re going to beat him again,” Biden said of Trump.
Biden then flew to Las Vegas to tout his administration’s housing policies, including new proposals to eliminate a range of fees to lower costs for homeowners and renters. He also called on the National Association of Realtors to honor a recent agreement that allows home buyers and sellers to negotiate lower commission rates than the typical 5 to 6 percent.
Biden is scheduled to make a second campaign stop in the key battleground county of Phoenix later Tuesday and also has an event scheduled Wednesday to discuss aid for the computer chip manufacturing sector.
The Reno speech coincided with the launch of Latinos con Biden-Harris (Latinos with Biden-Harris). Campaign ads have been produced in English, Spanish and a bilingual Spanglish mix, and Biden has given two radio interviews in Spanish. Biden has also emphasized his pro-union and pro-abortion rights messages during the visit.
“The Latino community is critical to our values,” Biden said on Univision Radio’s “El Bueno, La Mala y El Feo (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly).” “I’m going to do everything in my power to earn your support.”
During the interview, Biden turned a question about immigration into an attack on Trump, who has called immigrants “animals” and said they are “poisoning the blood” of the U.S. Biden also noted that Trump has promised to carry out mass deportations if given another term.
“This man has to be stopped. We have to stop this from happening,” Biden said. “We are a nation of immigrants.”
Biden’s outreach to Hispanic voters is part of his campaign’s broader effort to lay the groundwork to recapture various constituencies important to his reelection — an effort that’s all the more important as key parts of Biden’s base, including black and Hispanic adults, have become increasingly disillusioned with his performance in office.
An AP-NORC poll conducted in February found that 38% of U.S. adults approved of the way Biden was handling his job. Nearly 6 in 10 Black adults (58%) approved, compared with 36% of Hispanic adults. Black adults are more likely to approve of Biden than white and Hispanic adults, but their approval rating has declined in the three years since Biden took office.
