Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he expects President Joe Biden to remain in the race for the White House despite mounting pressure from the Democratic Party for Biden to step aside in favor of a younger candidate.
During his speech on Monday, Trump suggested that Biden would refuse to leave the campaign because of his ego and the fact that he has already secured the Democratic nomination with the delegates he won during the primaries earlier this year.
“Interestingly enough, he has a lot of power because he has the deputies. You know, when you have the deputies, unless he says, ‘I’m leaving,’ there’s nothing they can do to get him out other than the 25th Amendment,” Trump told Sean Hannity in a telephone interview on Fox News.
The 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution allows the vice president and cabinet members to declare the president unable to perform the duties of the office, transferring power to the vice president as acting president. There is currently no indication that Vice President Kamala Harris or top Democrats are pursuing this option.
“He has an ego and he doesn’t want to stop. He doesn’t want to do that. It seems to me that’s what he wants,” Trump said of his rival, who defeated him in the 2020 presidential election.
Trump’s comments come amid unrest within the Democratic Party following Biden’s poor performance in a debate against Trump on June 27, which has led to growing calls for Biden to withdraw from the campaign.
Interestingly, Trump’s interview contradicted his own recent offhand statements, in which he falsely told supporters at one of his golf courses that he had driven Biden out of the race. “He’s dropping out of the race… I took him out,” Trump said Wednesday in a video published by the Daily Beast.
Meanwhile, Biden has consistently stated that he plans to stay in the race. The current US president sent a letter to Democrats in Congress on Monday, saying he “remains committed to staying in this race, seeing this race to the end and defeating Donald Trump.”
