Obama Urged Chuck Schumer to Be the One to Knife Biden

Former President Barack Obama urged then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to be the one to talk President Joe Biden into dropping out of the 2024 presidential race.

After Biden’s disastrous debate performance on June 27, most Democrats agreed the president didn’t stand much chance of beating Donald Trump in the November election, according to a new report in The New York Times.

But they disagreed about how to convince him to step aside, with some favoring a private push while others preferred to apply public pressure. Even many who publicly supported him were working privately to get him out of the race, according to the Times.

After a few days, Obama reportedly told Schumer that his own relationship with Biden was fragile. Biden still resented the fact that Obama had backed Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, making him a poor choice of messenger to now tell Biden to step aside eight years later.

“You may be a better one,” he said.

The Daily Beast has reached out to representatives for Biden and Schumer.

Schumer had actually believed for months that Biden was capable of serving another term in office, but that he wouldn’t be able to win re-election because questions about his age and acuity dominated the election news.

Before the debate, he had decided not to explore options for a new candidate, because he was worried his efforts would be leaked to the press and would only serve to give Trump’s campaign more ammunition.

But afterwards, as Democratic senators became more and more concerned about their own re-election prospects, he warned Biden’s aides that he couldn’t hold his caucus back anymore, despite the affection many of them felt for the president.

During a meeting on July 11, Democratic senators told Biden’s team they were staying quiet long enough to give Biden time to exit the race gracefully, but would air their concerns publicly if they had to.

Two days later, Schumer drove to Biden’s beach house in Delaware to try to convince the president to step aside in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris. He told him what each Democratic senator had said during the July 11 meeting.

“If there’s a secret ballot, Mr. President, my guess is you at most get five yeses,” he said.

Schumer assured Biden that if the chances were 50-50, he would tell the president to stay in the race, but that internal polling gave him just a 5 percent chance of beating Trump.

All of this apparently came as a shock to Biden, leading Schumer to conclude that his aides hadn’t been honest with him, the Times reported.

A spokesperson for Biden disputed those claims.

“The President was fully briefed on campaign polling and fully briefed on his pollsters’ assessments. Internal and public numbers showed a competitive race,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement to the Daily Beast.

He reminded Biden that neither of them had gone into politics for money and power, but to leave a legacy, and listed all of their legislative achievements.

“If I had to leave politics tomorrow for whatever reason, I would say to myself, ‘All the s— we take in this job was worth it for making the world a better place.’ And your legacy is 20 times mine,” he told the president.

But now, Biden risking going down in history as one of the “darkest figures,” Schumer warned. The conversation lasted about 45 minutes, with Biden interrupting just twice to ask, “Do you really think Kamala can win?” Schumer said he didn’t know, but that at least she had a chance.

Biden said he needed a week to think about it.

As Schumer was leaving, Biden puts his hands on the senator’s shoulders and said, “You’ve got bigger balls than anyone I’ve ever met.”

Then the two men embraced and Schumer returned to his car, where he broke down in tears telling his aides about the meeting.

On July 21, Biden announced he was withdrawing from the race.