Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke said that former President Joe Biden should not have run for re-election in 2024 during an appearance on Pod Save America.
“Just to be clear, Biden should not have run again. And to be even more clear, he failed this country in the most important job that he had,” the former Texas senatorial and gubernatorial candidate said.
O’Rourke, who ran in the Democratic primary alongside Biden in 2020, added that “We might very well lose the greatest country that this world has ever known. And it might be in part because of the decision that Biden and those around him made to run for reelection.”
The Texas Democrat’s comments come as Biden and his inner circle are facing increasing scrutiny amid new revelations about his physical and mental decline while in office. It has been reported that staff discussed the use of a wheelchair in case Biden was re-elected last year. On Friday, audio was revealed from the former president’s 2023 interview with special counsel Robert Hur. Biden can be heard struggling to remember important dates and other information from his public and private life.
“If anything was clear coming out of 2024, [people] wanted change,” said O’Rourke. “And to literally run the oldest guy who many people, accurately, to your point, said ‘I just don’t think he is capable of doing this.’ … I think that credibility problem is going to persist up until when Democrats say ‘we f***** up and we made a terrible mistake.’”
Pod Save America host and former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau told Democrats with goals to run in 2028 last week to “rip the f****** band-aid off” and admit that Biden shouldn’t have run for re-election.
“The answer is, he shouldn’t have run for a second term,” said Favreau. “And when he did run for a second term, he should have stepped down much earlier after the debate, and his close advisers shouldn’t have told him to run again, and they shouldn’t have told him he was going to win.”
“I think that every Democratic politician, particularly those who want to lead the party and want to run in 2028, have to just rip the f****** Band-Aid off,” he added.
This comes as Biden has done interviews with the BBC and The View as he steps back into the limelight in an attempt to protect his legacy.
On The View, Biden pushed back against reporting of his cognitive decline, and former First Lady Jill Biden rejected the notion that she created “a cocoon around him.”
“They are wrong. There’s nothing to sustain that,” the former president said of the allegations of his decline while in office.
