Donald Trump said Tuesday that “there’s no question” President Biden was pushed out of his re-election campaign by top Democrats such as former President Barack Obama, who “can’t stand him.
“Obama can’t stand him, and he can’t stand Obama. Obama had a part because he said he wasn’t going to support him,” Trump, 78, told reporters on a phone call in response to a Post question.
“Nancy Pelosi dumped him,” the GOP presidential nominee added of Biden. “They all dumped him, and they said, “Either you get out nice or we’re going to go after you.’ And that’s what happened. And he had no choice. There’s no question about it.”
Biden, 81, nixed his 2024 re-election bid Sunday after a three-week pressure campaign from the upper echelons from the Democratic Party.
Obama reportedly told Biden that the president’s chances of beating Trump were “greatly diminished” after he appeared mentally compromised in his June 27 debate, and ex-House Speaker and Rep. Pelosi (D-Calif.) is said to have conveyed to him that polling shows he didn’t have the capacity to defeat the Republican in November.
“They told him to get out, ‘You’re not going to win,’ ” Trump said. “I was really beating him badly in the polls.
“I think it really started with the debate,” the former president said. “The debate was really [Biden’s] ending. He was not good at the debate. And I think I was good. Some people say I was very good, but whether I was or not, he was not good. And I think that was the end of Biden, frankly.
“And I think the politicians, the, you could call them elites in the party or you could call them the non-elites, because I think they’re generally not, but the people in the party said, ‘If you get out,’ they gave him a chance, and they said, ‘If you don’t get out, we’re going to go after you.’ And that was it. He got out,” Trump said.
The former president also said he would “absolutely” debate Vice President Kamala Harris, who is likely to get the Democratic presidential nomination after Biden’s drop-out and then endorsement of her.
But Trump also said he is “not thrilled” about the prospect of doing so on ABC, the network that he initially agreed to debate Biden on in a future rematch.
Trump meanwhile painted Harris as “more radical” than Biden, who was slightly more “mainstream.
“She’s the same as Biden but much more radical,” Trump said in his first press call since Harris became his probable opponent.
“She’s a radical left person, and this country doesn’t want a radical left person to destroy it. She’s far more radical than he is. She wants open borders. She wants things that nobody wants you take a look at the car mandate, the electric car mandate, everything,” he said.
“Really, what you should do is take a look at San Francisco now compared to before she became the district attorney, and you’ll see what she’ll do to our country,” Trump said.
“So I think she should be easier than Biden, because he was slightly more mainstream, but not much.”
