White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Biden believed he made the right decision to drop out of the presidential race in July, acknowledging there are many election experts analyzing the failed efforts by the Democratic Party with their own opinions on the race dominated by Republican President-elect Trump.
Jean-Pierre spoke to reporters during a press briefing Thursday afternoon, saying Biden had called Trump to congratulate him on his victory, assuring Trump he would direct his administration to work with Trump’s team to ensure a peaceful and orderly transition of power.
Additionally, Jean-Pierre said Biden had spoken with Vice President Kamala Harris to congratulate her on a “history-inspiring campaign.”
“For some people, this election is a time of victory, and for others, it’s a time of loss,” she said. “To state the obvious, Tuesday night’s results were not our team’s desired outcome. There’s going to be a lot of postmortem analysis of what happened in the coming days, in the coming weeks, even in the coming months.”
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One reporter asked Jean-Pierre to address the criticism directed at Biden for the loss.
“What I can say, and this is something the president says all the time: ‘You get knocked down, you get back up,’” Jean-Pierre said, noting the president made that exact statement moments earlier. “The president believes he made the right decision on behalf of the American people, on behalf of this country, to step aside.”
After the 2022 midterms, Biden decided to seek re-election despite polls in 2023 showing that about 80% of the American public believed the octogenarian was too old to serve another term.
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“What he believed is that 14 million voters decided in the primary to make him and the vice president, obviously she was on the ticket, the nominee,” Jean-Pierre said when asked again if Biden made the right decision to run for president. “Fourteen million Americans decided that. So, they made their decision on who they wanted.
“Now, as we know, in July the president made a decision to step aside and he immediately … endorsed the vice president,” she added.
Jean-Pierre was also pressed on whether it was wrong for the president’s team in 2023 to firmly encourage rising stars in the Democratic Party and others who participated in the 2020 cycle to rally behind Biden and not consider running for president.
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She refused to get into a specific conversation but said it was not unusual for party members to rally behind their leader, which, in this case, was Biden.
“What I can say is what the president decided to do, what the president believed and what the president is going to continue to do, [which] is put the American people first,” Jean-Pierre said.
She was also pressed about whether Biden still stands by his description of Trump being an existential threat to democracy.
Jean-Pierre said Biden believes what he said at the time and believes he had an obligation to be honest with Americans.
She backed her statement up by pointing to comments made by former chief of staff John Kelly, who referred to Trump as a “fascist.”
During a series of interviews conducted with the media and published in October, Kelly recounted multiple occasions when the former president allegedly praised Adolf Hitler. Kelly also insisted Trump met the “general definition of a fascist” and would govern like a dictator if allowed.
Jean-Pierre said Kelly was clear in his statements, while also pointing to statements made by Trump about the enemy within, going after people who disagree with him.
“Look, we’re being very clear here,” Jean-Pierre said. “The outcome was not what we wanted, and the Americans have made a decision that we want to respect. We want to respect the decision that the American people have made, and we are going to make sure that the American people get what they deserve, which is a peaceful transfer of power.”
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