Here’s what some of his allies are saying.
President Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race and endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris have stunned many on both sides of the aisle. Now, some believe this turn of events will force Republicans to rethink their strategy.
Just days after former President Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance took turns lobbing insults at Biden, they were confronted with the stark reality of pivoting a campaign that mostly focused on beating the former president.
“Republicans are scrambling at the moment — they had devised a campaign based around a Biden candidacy,” Sara Sadhwani, an assistant professor of politics at Pomona College, tells Katie Couric Media. “Kamala Harris brings renewed energy, her diverse background will help her to mobilize a broad array of Americans to the polls, and her experience as a prosecutor will be a stark contrast to Donald Trump’s felony convictions.”
Few were as outraged by Biden’s withdrawal as Trump. Just hours after the president made his decision official, the Republican nominee took to his platform Truth Social, declaring, “It’s not over!” That said, GOP strategist Steve Yates said Republicans weren’t exactly shocked and had already been readying contingency plans. However, there were some questions about whether Biden would go through with dropping out.
“[Biden] was so emphatic about staying in the race,” Yates tells us. “You take the guy at his word, but how it has unfolded, I would say that that ought to surprise anybody who’s watched presidential politics in my lifetime.”
So, we took a closer look at how he and his fellow conservatives are responding to the news.
Trump’s reaction to Biden’s exit from the 2024 race
In a series of posts on his platform, Truth Social, Trump wasted no time venting about the news. “Tomorrow Crooked Joe Biden’s going to wake up and forget that he dropped out of the race today!” he wrote late Sunday.
Trump then complained that he had unfairly spent money campaigning against the president. “So, we are forced to spend time and money on fighting Crooked Joe Biden, he polls badly after having a terrible debate, and quits the race,” the former president wrote. “Now we have to start all over again.”
He also even suggested that he may withdraw from the scheduled presidential debate in September unless there are major changes. ABC News had been slated to host the face-off, but now that Biden has dropped out of the race, it’s still being determined whether it will happen at all. “Now that Joe has, not surprisingly, has quit the race, I think the Debate, with whomever the Radical Left Democrats choose, should be held on FoxNews, rather than very biased ABC,” he said.
Former Trump 2020 campaign communications director Marc Lotter believes Trump has the advantage if there is another debate. “It’s Kamala Harris that needs to prove to the American people that she belongs on the same stage, so that puts Donald Trump in the driver’s seat,” he tells us.
These comments come amid growing momentum around Harris. Several top Democrats, like former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and even those seen as potential challengers, like California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, backed her candidacy. Meanwhile, the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue announced that the vice president raised more than $100 million since she became a candidate on Sunday.
What about other Republicans?
Trump’s allies have expressed similar outrage over Biden’s exit, and Lotter criticized what he described as an attack on American democracy.
“Politically, Biden didn’t really have a choice — Democrats pretty much forced him out, regardless of whether he wanted to stay or not,” Lotter told us. “It’s laughable that the so-called self-proclaimed defenders of democracy ditched democracy and disenfranchised 14 million people who voted for Joe Biden, including many millions of voters of color, because it was politically expedient to do something different. So that’s a problem they’re going to have to live with.”
Others have pushed sinister conspiracy theories after Biden’s unprecedented exit, which he announced in a letter on X. Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert questioned whether the president was still alive and demanded his “proof of life.” Similarly, Georgia Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed there was a “soft civil war happening in the deep state and the elites in power.” (There’s been no evidence that either claim holds water.)
“The way it happened is just so unusual,” Yates said of Biden’s decision to step aside on social media. “Everyone was just sort of waiting for President Biden to make a personal appearance, especially for a decision this momentous, and there’s no video public statement from the president.”
While it’s true that Biden has largely stayed out of public view as he recovers from COVID-19, he stated in his letter ending his campaign that he planned to deliver an address to the nation later this week to discuss his decision to end his candidacy. “For now, let me express my deepest gratitude to all those who have worked so hard to see me reelected,” he wrote.
Will Biden’s exit impact Trump?
Republicans, including Yates, have disputed the idea that the Trump campaign would face new challenges, given how much it had focused on Biden. “When it all boils down to brass tacks for Republicans, they’re running against a policy agenda, a system, not an individual,” he tells us.
They insist that nothing has changed, and any Democrat who picks up the party’s banner will inherit Biden’s baggage — and that Harris in particular will have to answer to her time as a prosecutor and her approach to the border. Within months of taking office, the president tasked Harris with tackling the “root causes” of immigration, but she struggled to distance herself from the politics of migrant surges at the border.
“All of the policy decisions which were so unpopular and led to their unpopularity under Joe Biden are the same policies that would be supported and endorsed and continued by Kamala Harris,” he says.
There’s no love lost: Harris has been constantly criticizing Trump on abortion, which is noteworthy because she’s been one of the Biden administration’s biggest defenders on the issue. Shortly after Biden’s announcement on Sunday, she said on X that she would do everything she could to unite the party to defeat Trump’s “extreme” agenda.
Trump’s campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles criticized Harris, asserting she would be “even WORSE for the people of our Nation than Joe Biden.” In a statement, they lambasted both Biden and Harris, describing Harris as Biden’s “Enabler-in-Chief.”
Despite Biden’s endorsement, Harris may face her fair share of skepticism within her own party, with recent polling showing mixed opinions on her ability to beat Trump. According to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll conducted July 5-9, Harris polled about the same as Biden against the former president in head-to-head matchups, though a July 13-16 Economist/YouGov poll found that Harris was slightly worse off than Biden.
At this point, insiders agree that the election could go either way, and there’s still a lot of uncertainty in the race for the White House. GOP strategist Matt Terrill expects the dust to settle with early voting, which starts as soon as September in states like Illinois and Minnesota.
“There’s going to be a honeymoon period once Democrats officially have a nominee and a VP,” says Terrill, who was the chief of staff of Senator Marco Rubio’s 2020 presidential campaign. “But I think the race will settle, and we’ll see where this goes over the next few weeks, particularly heading into early voting.”
