Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday that former President Joe Biden made a “terrible mistake” by running for re-election in 2024.
Her comments, in an interview at the 92nd Street Y in New York City with New Yorker editor David Remnick, were her strongest public criticism yet of Biden’s decision to embark on another presidential campaign before he ultimately dropped out after a widely panned debate performance.
Asked by Remnick whether Biden made a “terrible mistake” by running in 2024, Clinton responded, “He made a terrible mistake. He made a terrible mistake for himself, his legacy and for the country.”
While Clinton acknowledged that “counterfactual narratives are always a bit tricky,” she said she believed that had Biden maintained his original plan to serve only one term and announced that he would “pass the torch to the next generation, we would have had a real contest.”
“Very sadly, I believe whoever emerged from that contest, whether it was the vice president or a governor or a senator or anybody else, would have beaten Donald Trump,” she said. “So I think it was a terrible miscalculation on the part of President Biden.”
T.J. Ducklo, a spokesperson for Biden, declined to comment.
Reached for comment on Clinton’s remarks that another candidate would have beaten Trump, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle called Clinton “a whiny loser who no one wants to hear from.”
Biden dropped out of the presidential race after a debate just months before the election, ultimately throwing his support behind then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Former first lady Jill Biden, who at the time praised her husband’s performance as “great” and said he “answered every question,” revealed this spring that she thought he was having a stroke during the debate, adding that she had not seen him like that “before or since.”
Biden’s debate performance sparked a deluge of concern about his age and mental fitness, ultimately prompting numerous Democrats to publicly call on him to drop out of the race.
Asked why high-profile Democrats were not more vocal about his decision to run for re-election, Clinton said that while conversations were happening privately, “there was no way to convince him by going public.”
Clinton was also asked whether Harris lost the election only because of the short campaign timeline.
“I think that was definitely a factor,” Clinton said. “I think she also found herself really in a difficult position trying to run as the sitting vice president but separate herself from the sitting president. That’s really hard.”
Clinton was the Democratic nominee for president in 2016, and both she and Biden also ran for president in the 2008 cycle. Barack Obama ultimately won that contest after he picked Biden as his running mate.
In 2022, Clinton was asked in a panel conversation whether she would endorse Biden if he announced he was running for re-election. She said she “would endorse our sitting president,” adding that it was “a silly question.”
“Let’s go with the person most likely to win,” she said at the time. “Joe Biden beat, in a huge landslide victory in the popular vote, Donald Trump. I think that says a lot.”
