Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro responded with a six-minute video on Sunday to President Joe Biden announcing he would be ending his campaign while finishing his first term in office.
Shapiro said the unprecedented announcement, which Biden made less than four months before the 2024 election, opens up “massive” questions for the Democratic Party, especially Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Biden threw his support behind after dropping out. The Daily Wire host began his video by addressing how Biden made the huge announcement in a letter that was posted on the president’s X account.
“You would figure that he would do a sort of ‘farewell’ press conference,” Shapiro said.
“He is not retiring from the presidency itself. He is only saying that he is not going to run, which leaves open a massive question as to why exactly he is qualified to continue running the country right now, but he is not qualified to continue running for the nomination of the Democratic Party.”
“He is not leaving because he is senile. He is leaving because he is losing,” Shapiro added.
JOE BIDEN IS OUT. My immediate reaction. pic.twitter.com/ga2uoxfAyu
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) July 21, 2024
Another question Democrats must consider, according to Shapiro, is how they will campaign if Harris is granted the Democratic nomination.
“All of the attacks that have been leveraged against Joe Biden can now be leveraged against Kamala Harris,” he said. “And because he’s not stepping down from the presidency, the question is going to be to Kamala Harris, ‘You know he’s too senile to be President of the United States. Why don’t you 25th Amendment him? Why don’t you push him out?’”
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Shapiro also pointed out that if Harris becomes the nominee while Biden finishes the final months of his second term, it puts the vice president “between a rock and a hard place.”
“On the one hand, she doesn’t want to be responsible for everything Biden is doing; on the other hand, she can’t actually control the government,” he said. “She can’t actually control anything. … She is an extraordinarily vulnerable candidate.”
Shapiro added that he doubts any of the leaders of the Democratic Party, such as California Governor Gavin Newsom and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, would want to make a move for the nomination in an open convention. Instead, those Democrats could “wait this one out, watch Kamala Harris go down in flames, and then bank on 2028,” said Shapiro.
“This is a total mess for the Democratic Party.”
Earlier this month, Shapiro released a three-part series dissecting how Harris rose through the political ranks of the Democratic Party, an ascent Shapiro described as being marked by “deceit and corruption.”
The Daily Wire editor emeritus said that Republicans have some questions to answer as well.
“The reality is that the entire Republican campaign has been centered for the past month-and-a-half, two months, on Joe Biden’s senility,” he said. “That is no longer going to be the chief issue on the ballot. … The entire playbook is going to have to be shifted now to a new candidate. If it’s Kamala, again, there’s plenty to attack her on.”
“Republicans are going to have to direct all of their political firepower at the Democratic positions,” Shapiro added. “They’re going to have to go back to Joe Biden being a bad president, the White House being a bad White House. The entire race just got upended.”
