The Democratic Party “staged a coup” against US President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump has claimed. Trump has previously alleged that Barack Obama orchestrated Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race.
Biden suspended his reelection bid last month, after a weeks-long pressure campaign in which senior Democrats – including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former President Barack Obama – and party donors convinced the 81-year-old that he could not defeat Trump in November.
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“They staged a coup against the President of the United States,” Trump told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham in an interview this week. “They went in and they told him ‘you’re leaving, you’re way down in the polls’, 17 points, I think.”
“It’s like you’re in a fight with somebody, and you’re really winning, and they take him out and they put somebody else in,” he continued. “Nobody ever heard of this before. This is a coup.”
Speaking to the New York Post last month, Trump claimed that Obama “can’t stand” Biden, and played a leading role in ousting his former vice president from the race.
“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,” Trump told the newspaper.
Biden, who at the time was quarantined at home with Covid-19, announced his withdrawal on social media. The president did not appear in public until three days after the announcement, and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to run in his stead in a short post on X (formerly Twitter).
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“I would rather run against her than him,” Trump told Ingraham. “I think she’s easier than he is. I always felt he was incompetent but he had a certain base, and no matter how bad he was, people were going to vote for him. She doesn’t have that base.”
Harris ran for her party’s presidential nomination in 2019, but withdrew from the primary race that year with less than 900 popular votes and her polling numbers in the low single digits.
Despite being an historically unpopular vice president, Harris is currently polling better against Trump than Biden was before his withdrawal, although analysts have cautioned that she is likely benefiting from a “bump” in enthusiasm that will subside as the campaign drags on.
Trump has focused his attacks on Harris’ liberal record and her role as Biden’s “border czar,” blaming the vice president for record levels of illegal immigration seen since 2021. Trump has also lobbed more personal attacks at Harris, telling a panel of black journalists on Wednesday that she promoted her Indian heritage until “she happened to turn black and now she wants to be known as black,” and telling Ingraham that she has “the laugh of a crazy person.”