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Former senior advisor to the former president Joe BidenMike Donilon on Tuesday criticized the Democratic Party for pushing Biden out of his 2024 re-election campaign.
Donilon criticized the decision to replace Biden as “undemocratic” and a “treason” that cost the Democratic Party the presidency.
“I thought what happened in the party, I thought it was disloyal. I thought it was an act of betrayal of the president. I thought it was undemocratic because it didn’t respect the will of the Democratic primary voters,” he said.
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Former President Joe Biden’s former senior adviser Mike Donilon on Tuesday criticized the Democratic Party for getting Biden to abandon his race last June. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty)
Donilon made the comments while speaking as a guest panelist at the USC Center for the Political Future conference this week.
The event’s moderator, CNN anchor Elex Michaelson, asked the former Biden adviser for his opinion on Biden’s decision to withdraw from the race. Donilon responded by criticizing those who had advised the president to resign.
“I thought the Democratic Party had lost its mind. That’s what I thought,” he said.
Several Democratic leaders — including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. – reportedly called on Biden to step down from his re-election campaign after his disastrous debate against President Donald Trump in June 2024.
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Former President Biden in the White House during his term in office. (Fox News)
Donilon said ousting Biden was the wrong move, saying: “I thought Joe Biden was the best candidate. I thought he was the person most likely to be elected president. I thought he was the best president.”
He pointed out that the party dropped Biden even though he was still within three points of Trump in the polls – within the margin of error. Donilon claimed it was the first time in U.S. history that a candidate was replaced despite being so close in the polls.
Donilon added that “there was a perception that he couldn’t do his job” – a perception the ex-adviser disputed, saying: “Nobody can point to a moment in the Biden presidency where he didn’t do his job as president.”
He also argued that Biden should have stayed in the race since he was the only candidate to ever beat Trump.
“So my opinion was that there were three people who ran against Donald Trump — Joe Biden is the only one who ever beat him.”
The Washington Post reported In December 2024, Biden told his then-allies that he still believed he could have beaten Trump if he had continued to run.
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Former President Biden’s former senior adviser Mike Donilon this week called it politically “stupid” that the Democratic Party was trying to launch a new campaign with former Vice President Kamala Harris just months before Election Day in 2024. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
During the conference, Donilon also criticized the idea of
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“And I thought it was politically stupid because I think that the idea that you can launch a campaign and run a candidate in the middle of the summer, a few weeks before a convention, was not a wise decision,” he said, although he made clear that he thought Harris ran “a really good race.”
