Despite the calls of many within the Democratic Party for Joe Biden to exit the 2024 presidential campaign, he has thus far remained defiant and vows to keep on running against Donald Trump.
For his part, Trump revealed in a recent interview that he believes a 2020 rematch is essentially a sure thing.
As Newsmax reported:
“Interestingly, he’s got a lot of power, because he’s got the delegates. You know, when you have the delegates, unless he says, ‘I’m getting out,’ they can’t do anything to get him out other than the 25th amendment,” Trump told interviewer Sean Hannity in a telephone call broadcast on Fox News.
The 25th amendment of the U.S. constitution enables the vice president and cabinet members to declare the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office, transferring the job to the vice president as acting president. There is no indication Vice President Kamala Harris or top Democrats have advanced that option.
“He’s got an ego, and he doesn’t want to quit. He doesn’t want to do that. It just looks to me like that’s what he wants,” Trump said of his rival, who unseated Trump when the former president ran for re-election in 2020.
Given Biden’s growing unpopularity, it seems that Trump and his supporters want the incumbent president to remain in the race.
Crooked Joe Biden should ignore his many critics and move forward, with alacrity and strength, with his powerful and far reaching campaign. He should be sharp, precise, and energetic, just like he was in The Debate, in selling his policies of Open Borders (where millions of…
— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) July 6, 2024
But Trump has also expressed confidence that he would be able to defeat Vice President Kamala Harris if she replaces Biden at the top of November’s ballot:
Joe Biden can’t even walk up a flight of stairs let alone run the country for another 4 months let alone 4 years. I am sure Kamala Harris will take over. I will proudly destroy Kamala in a debate! RIP Joe.
pic.twitter.com/lvLn16KCbn— Donald J. Trump (Parody) (@realDonParody) July 9, 2024
🚨 LEAKED VIDEO: Trump on Biden he’s “quitting the race.. I got him out” he’s an “old broken-down pile of crap… Now we have Kamala. She’s so f—king bad”
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 4, 2024
Polls show that the perennially unpopular vice president isn’t positioned to fare any better against Trump than Biden, as New York Magazine reported:
The widely shared perception that Harris is too unpopular to pick up the party banner if Biden dropped it, but too well-positioned to be pushed aside without huge collateral damage, was a major part of the mindset of political observers when evaluating Democratic options after the debate. But now fresher evidence of Harris’s public standing shows she’s just as viable as many of the candidates floated in fantasy scenarios about an “open convention,” “mini-primary,” or smoke-filled room that would sweep away both parts of the Biden-Harris ticket.
For a good while now, Harris’s job-approval numbers have been converging with Biden’s after trailing them initially. These indicate dismal popularity among voters generally, but not in a way that makes her an unacceptable replacement candidate should she be pressed into service in an emergency. As of now, her job-approval ratio in the FiveThirtyEight averages is 37.1 percent approve to 51.2 percent disapprove. Biden’s is 37.4 percent approve to 56.8 percent disapprove. In the favorability ratios tracked by RealClearPolitics, Harris is at 38.3 favorable to 54.6 percent unfavorable, while Biden is at 39.4 percent favorable to 56.9 percent unfavorable. There’s just not a great deal of difference other than slightly lower disapproval/unfavorable numbers for the veep.
Here’s a clip from Trump’s remarks during the recent Fox News interview:
🚨 JUST IN: President Trump believes Joe Biden will STAY IN the race, and that Hunter and Dr. Jill are in control
TRUMP: “I think Jill would like to see him stay. She seems to be having a good time. I hear that Hunter is calling the shots.”
He’s dang right! pic.twitter.com/JaaSoXG6hC
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) July 9, 2024
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