Former President Donald Trump reacted to President Joe Biden dropping out of the 2024 race by telling NBC News that Biden “is the worst president in the history of the United States by far.”
“There has never been a president who has done such damage to our country, from energy independence to letting in millions and millions of illegal immigrants,” Trump told NBC News in an interview.
When asked whether he was surprised by Biden’s announcement, Trump said that Biden “should never have been there in the first place.”
“He should have stayed in his basement,” Trump continued.
A senior Trump adviser told NBC News before Biden’s announcement that while the campaign had argued that it did not care who was at the top of the Democratic ticket, the adviser said the campaign preferred that Biden stay in the race because it had been planning for that matchup.
The Trump campaign also has internal polling that indicates that Harris outperforms Biden in some cases, but that he outperforms her in others, according to the senior adviser.
The former president used a Saturday rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to insult Biden and criticize Democrats who urged Biden to drop his re-election bid.
“This guy goes and he gets the votes, and now they want to take it away,” Trump said during the rally. “That’s democracy. They talk about democracy. ‘Let’s take it away from him.’”
The former president has continued criticizing Biden in multiple Truth Social posts in the hours after Biden announced his decision.
