Buttigieg Walks Back Years of Defending Biden, Says Ex-President ‘Should Not Have Run
Biden dropped out of his re-election bid after facing a mutiny from his fellow Democrats. Getty Images
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who once vigorously defended President Joe Biden against criticism of his age and mental sharpness, said Sunday that the 82-year-old should not have sought a second term.
Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press, Buttigieg, 43, acknowledged that he had no part in Biden’s decision-making process but suggested that a different choice might have spared Democrats from a political defeat.
“He should not have run,” Buttigieg said. “And if he had made that decision sooner, we might have been better off. But it was ultimately his decision. No one else could make it for him. Now we have to focus on what comes next.”
Buttigieg’s remarks align with those of Vice President Kamala Harris, who has also criticized Biden’s decision to run again. In her upcoming book, Harris reportedly calls Biden’s reelection bid “recklessness,” according to a preview in The Atlantic.
“We all said, ‘It’s Joe and Jill’s decision,’ like a mantra, as if we’d been hypnotized,” Harris wrote. “Was it grace or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness.”
Buttigieg, seen as a potential contender for the 2028 presidential race, had previously taken a more cautious tone regarding Biden’s candidacy. As recently as May, he told reporters, “Maybe, you know, right now, with the benefit of hindsight, I think most people would agree that is the case,” when asked whether Biden should have stepped aside.
In a July interview with NPR, Buttigieg denied seeing signs of cognitive decline in the president, attributing Biden’s missteps to fatigue rather than impairment.
“At every point when I needed something from the West Wing, I got it,” Buttigieg said in May, citing the administration’s swift response to the Baltimore bridge collapse as an example. “The president I worked with was the same one the world saw then.”
However, the release of Original Sin, a book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, has forced many top Democrats to confront their previous defenses of Biden. The book reports that several unnamed Cabinet members privately doubted Biden’s fitness for office.
Following Biden’s eventual withdrawal from the race and Harris’s subsequent loss to President Donald Trump, internal criticism within the Democratic Party has become more vocal — with Buttigieg now joining the chorus.
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