On Thursday, "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough made a striking claim: he asserted that President Joe Biden’s campaign believes that former President Barack Obama is working behind the scenes to pressure Biden to exit the presidential race.
Former Obama advisers have indeed pounced on Biden since his disastrous debate performance last month, and this week, actor George Clooney, a friend of Obama's, wrote an op-ed declaring that Biden should step aside.
Scarborough believes that the Biden campaign and Democratic officials suspect that Barack Obama is personally behind it all.
“What’s going on behind the scenes is the Biden campaign and many Democratic officials do believe that Barack Obama is quietly working behind the scenes to orchestrate this,” Scarborough said. “And if Joe Biden believes that, that’s not going to get him out of the race any faster. Any time David Axelrod attacks him, David Axelrod ensures that Joe Biden will dig himself in another day. Any time the pod bros say something nasty about Joe Biden — which they have repeatedly said nasty things about Joe Biden, before the debate, after the debate — every time they do that, he digs in a little bit further.”
“The pathway to Joe Biden graciously stepping aside does not go through the Obamas or the Clintons. It just doesn’t,” Scarborough continued. “Again, as I said, because some people don’t understand, I’m not talking about what ought to be; I’m talking about what is."
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Scarborough added that Joe Biden "is deeply resentful of his treatment under not only the Obama staff but also the way he was pushed aside for Hillary Clinton," and is similarly resentful of the effort to get him to drop out of the presidential race. "He’s always felt like an outsider, always felt like people have looked down upon him.”
Biden Campaign Believes Obama Is Working 'Behind The Scenes' To 'Orchestrate' Calls To Step Down, Joe Scarborough Says pic.twitter.com/rU5q58TSUY
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) July 11, 2024
"It was not surprising to any of us who were at the fundraiser. I was there. Clooney was exactly right, and every single person I talked to at the fundraiser thought the same thing, except for the people working for Joe Biden, or at least they didn't say that," former Obama advisor Jon Favreau told CNN this week.
"It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe 'big F-ing deal' Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate," Clooney wrote in his brutal op-ed that was published on Wednesday.
More elected Democrats are also coming out against Biden.
"This race is on a trajectory that is very worrisome if you care about the future of this country,” Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) told CNN on Tuesday. "Joe Biden was nine points up at this time, the last time he was running. Bill Clinton was five points up. This is the first time in more than 20 years that a Republican president has been up in this part of the campaign."
Barack Obama came to Bennet's aid back in 2010, when he was struggling to fend off a primary challenge. Polls had shown that Bennet's challenger was ahead a few points before Obama stepped in.
Bennet added, "Donald Trump is on track, I think, to win this election. And maybe win it by a landslide and take with it the Senate and the House."
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