Donald Trump just can’t let go of Joe Biden.
The president dropped out of the 2024 presidential race more than a month ago, but his former Republican opponent continues to bring him up, suggesting that Trump still can’t wrap his head around the fact that he’s facing an entirely new presidential race against Vice President Kamala Harris.
“You know, if Biden hadn’t done the debate, he’d be the Democratic nominee for president right now,” Trump wrote on his website Truth Social on Tuesday. “The fact is, debate or no debate, the Democrats really gave him a number!!!”
In another post last week, Trump questioned why an “angry” Biden “gave up” and withdrew his candidacy. “He’s an angry man now, and he should be!” the former president added.
Biden’s disastrous performance in the June 27 debate against Trump and questions about the 81-year-old president’s age and acumen led many Democrats to call for him to pass the torch to a younger presidential standard-bearer. He did so last month while endorsing Harris, 59, in an enduring week of ugly infighting in his party.
During his speech at the Democratic National Convention last week, Biden denied reports that he still harbors frustrations with people pressuring him to withdraw from the race.
“I love the job, but I love my country more,” Biden said. “All this talk about how angry I am at all these people who said I should resign. That’s not true.”
Still, people close to Biden are not happy with the way he has been publicly dismissed. According to NBC News, they point the finger at some influential Democratic politicians, such as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Trump’s frustration with the upended nature of the race centers on the fact that, at 78, he can no longer run against an aging, unpopular incumbent president. Harris has surged in the polls and received a flurry of media attention in the wake of Biden’s departure, leaving Trump scrambling to regain the spotlight, including holding press conferences, listening to an interview with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, rejoining X (formerly Twitter) and ranting online.
Trump has also struggled to focus on Harris, throwing around a variety of nicknames and lines of attack at her. Last week, at a rally in North Carolina, he mocked his advisers for telling him to focus on policy differences with Democrats instead of hurling personal insults.
“‘Please, sir, don’t get personal. Talk about policy,'” Trump said, paraphrasing his staffers, before asking the crowd: “These are the two questions: Should I get personal? Should I not get personal?”
As his supporters cheered increasingly loudly at personal attacks, Trump joked, “My advisers are fired.”
Trump and Harris appear set to face off for the first time on a debate stage in Philadelphia next month. After some wrangling between the two campaigns over the rules and format, the former president announced Tuesday that he had agreed to a debate with the vice president on Sept. 10, moderated by ABC News.
“The rules will be the same as the last CNN debate, which seemed to work out well for everybody except maybe Crooked Joe Biden,” Trump said on Truth Social.
