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Top Joe Biden adviser has surprising response for why the 81-year-old REALLY dropped out... and what is his 'greatest' lasting legacy
Longtime Biden advisor Anita Dunn is calling the president's to step back and throw his full support to Vice President Kamala Harris the greatest part of his legacy – while settling scores with Democratic leaders who pressed him to end his reelection run.
She gave her first detailed public comments about his stunning decision to step back from his 2024 bid amid mounting pressure from party leaders and growing public discontent with his ability to serve another four years.
'You know, it was rough. And no reflection on the vice president because I think one of the greatest things about Joe Biden's legacy will be that he made sure that there was a pipeline in which Kamala Harris was going to be the natural person everyone turned to if something happened to him,' she told Politico in an interview.
The remark is in keeping with what many elected Democrats while trying to nudge him, saying it would be and act of supreme statesmanship to step back from his run.
'He ran because he believed he was the best person to beat Donald Trump. And because he also believed he was the best person to lead the country. Now, if he's not a candidate, he made it very clear that the second-best person was his vice president. And that is where we are now,' she said.
Longtime Biden advisor Anita Dunn said one of the greatest parts of Joe Biden's legacy is putting Kamala Harris in the 'pipeline'
Biden's move July 24 to both announce his decision and throw immediate support to Harris, jump-started a process where a series of leaders threw their support to her, despite earlier predictions it could cause a nasty floor fight at the party's upcoming Chicago convention.
Dunn, who is leaving the White House to join a pro-Harris super PAC, also quibbled with characterizations of his debate disaster as catostrophic, even though it precipitated the end of his run.
'Voters didn't particularly like Biden's performance in the first half hour. He wasn't scoring well at all. But it's not as though they walked out,' she said. 'They very much liked a lot of the second half of the debate for Joe Biden. They hated Donald Trump.'
She recalled '24 days of unremitting negative, horrible attacks on Joe Biden.'
Among her most sharp remarks were hitting back at former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has continued to comment on Biden while taking a victory lap. Harris' numbers have shot up, injecting what her running mate Tim Walz calls 'joy' into the campaign, and persuading Democrats she has a fighting chance.
President Joe Biden is spending the weekend in Delaware while Harris campaigns out West
'You know, clearly there were leaders of the party who decided to go ahead and go very public. And that gave permission to other people to go public,' she said.
During the brutal period of reflection after the debate, some Democrats faulted Biden's team for agreeing to an earlier than usual contest with Donald Trump, and for failing to share the weaknesses that resulted in what the White House at the time called a 'bad night.'
'So [former President] Trump didn’t gain any ground in the debate whatsoever. And we actually picked up a few votes in the group. So it was a bad debate, but it didn’t feel catastrophic at all, certainly in terms of voters,' said Dunn.
'And I think other people who did independent research saw roughly the same thing. If you go back and you look at the polls, what you will see is you didn’t see much movement whatsoever coming out of the debate because the structure of this campaign had been fairly static for a long time, and the debate didn’t change that.'
Pelosi has also described Biden's decision as a key part of his legacy on a recent media tour. But she also told the New Yorker she knew after the debate he wouldn't win.
'But my concern was: This ain’t happening, and we have to make a decision for this to happen,' she told the magazine. 'The president has to make the decision for that to happen. People were calling. I never called one person. I kept true to my word. Any conversation I had, it was just going to be with him. I never made one call. They said I was burning up the lines, I was talking to (Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer). I didn’t talk to Chuck at all.'