Soon after US President Joe Biden dropped out of the US Presidential race, Republican nominee Donald Trump said Vice President Kamala Harris will be easier to defeat in November's election than the 81-year-old President. Trump, 78, later also attacked Biden on social media by calling him the "worst President in the history” and saying he was unfit to continue running the office.
"Harris will be easier to beat than Joe Biden would have been...He (Biden) goes down as the single worst president by far in the history of our country," Trump told CNN.
He also called Biden “crooked” on his Truth Social network and said that everyone around the President knew he was incapable of running for office.
"My debate with Crooked Joe Biden, the Worst President in the history of the United States, was slated to be broadcast on Fake News ABC, the home of George Slopadopolus, sometime in September. Now that Joe has, not surprisingly, has quit the race, I think the Debate, with whomever the Radical Left Democrats choose, should be held on FoxNews, rather than very biased ABC. Thank you! DJT," he wrote on Truth Social.
"So, we are forced to spend time and money on fighting Crooked Joe Biden, he polls badly after having a terrible debate, and quits the race. Now we have to start all over again. Shouldn’t the Republican Party be reimbursed for fraud in that everybody around Joe, including his doctors and the Fake News Media, knew he was not capable of running for, or being, President? Just askin’?," he added.
In a statement after Biden dropped out, the Trump campaign said Harris was Biden's "enabler in chief." The campaign said Biden and Harris owned each other's records and "there is no distance between the two."
The official Republican National Committee YouTube channel published a two-minute video on Sunday afternoon attacking Harris over immigration policies, alleging she neglected that issue.
Other top Republicans, including House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson, also said Biden was not fit to serve as president and finish his term if he was stepping aside as the Democratic presidential candidate. Johnson explicitly called on Biden to resign.
Trump, in a post on his Truth Social platform, said, "We will suffer greatly because of his (Biden's) presidency, but we will remedy the damage he has done very quickly."
Biden ended his reelection campaign on Sunday after fellow Democrats lost faith in his mental acuity and ability to beat Trump. He endorsed his VP Harris to replace him as the party's candidate. Biden had faced growing doubts about his reelection chances after a weak and faltering performance in a televised debate against Trump late last month.
Trump and Biden had been mostly tied in polls, but after the debate some polls showed Trump narrowly ahead of the president in a match-up for the November elections. The Trump campaign had already begun discussions about how it would redeploy campaign resources for the possibility of Biden's dropping out, Reuters reported quoting a source with direct knowledge of the matter.
Given that any alternative Democratic candidate would likely have different strengths and weaknesses than Biden, that person said, the president's dropping out would require rethinking where to spend ad dollars and where to deploy resources more generally.
Publicly, Trump campaign advisers and allies have been telling reporters they are not worried about facing Harris because they can simply tie her to Biden's record in office, particularly on immigration and inflation. They say they will try to portray Harris, and any of the other candidates being suggested as alternatives for the Democrats, as being to the left of Biden on various policies.
In recent weeks, Trump's campaign and some of his allies have also launched pre-emptive political attacks on Harris to try to discredit her amid talk she could replace Biden atop the party's 2024 presidential ticket. In March 2021 Biden said Harris would lead efforts with Mexico and Central American nations to address illegal immigration.
Republicans have seized on that to accuse her of failing to stem the flow of millions of migrants crossing illegally into the United States, although she was never directly responsible for securing the southern border.