Joe Biden is running for U.S. president in 2020

PanARMENIAN.Net - After months of deliberation, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday, April 25 announced his decision to run for president for a third time, answering one of the biggest outstanding questions about the makeup of the 2020 race, CNN reports.

Armenian President Armen Sarkissian had earlier asked Biden if he intended to run for president in 2020. Video showed the two meeting at the Munich Security Council in Germany and exchanging a few words, but the conversation was mainly whispered. "Are you going to run?" Sarkissian was caught asking. What Biden said, however, could not be heard as the two started whispering.

The announcement came in a campaign video released Thursday morning.

"The core values of this nation ... our standing in the world... our very democracy ... everything that has made America -- America -- is at stake. That's why today I'm announcing my candidacy for President of the United States," Biden tweeted, along with the campaign video.

Later Thursday, Biden will attend a fundraiser in Philadelphia. On Monday, he will hold his first official event in Pittsburgh. followed by a swing through early voting states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina in the coming weeks.

Biden, 76, enters the crowded Democratic primary field of 20 candidates as the presumptive front-runner sitting atop the most recent polls. But his more than four-decades-long career is set to undergo an unprecedented level of scrutiny as he seeks to win the Democratic nomination to take on President Donald Trump in a general election.

Biden, a centrist Democrat who often touts his relationships with those across the aisle, also will grapple with a Democratic Party that is increasingly feeling a pull from the left with a number of progressive candidates, like Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, in the 2020 race.

Trump has described a general election match-up against the former vice president as a "dream," while some Republicans cast Biden, who has crafted a political brand aimed at appealing to working-class voters, as the most feared potential Democratic opponent for the President.