On a new episode of “Morning Joe” on Monday, host Joe Scarborough shared his thoughts on Joe Biden officially dropping out of the presidential race, saying he thinks Donald Trump and Republicans are now “panicking.”
“I’ve been hearing from the Trump campaign for a while now that the one thing Donald Trump was afraid of was not running against Joe Biden,” Scarborough said. “If you talk about boxing, he was used to going against Biden, right? So, what did they do? They changed it: it’s now a left-handed one.’
Biden announced his decision Sunday evening, writing: “I believe it is in the best interests of my party and the country that I resign and focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.” He then endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee.
Top Democrats have been calling on Biden, 81, to resign since he debated Republican nominee Donald Trump on CNN last month, raising questions about his fitness to run because of his age. Now that Harris, 59, is the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, Scarborough said of Trump: “Suddenly he is by far the oldest man in the race.”
‘The only thing that had to be done [Trump] was the idea that he might not run against Biden because that’s all he’s focused on since 2020,” Scarborough said. ‘But now you hear it [Speaker of the House] Mike Johnson, you hear all these people freaking out, ‘This is illegal, you can’t do this. You can’t decide at a conference who will be your nominee. You can’t let the delegates decide.’ Well, you can. It’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard in my life. But again, the fact that they’re panicking like this must excite a Democratic party that was really at the lowest ebb of any party I’ve seen since Watergate.”
Scarborough had previously openly questioned whether Biden was capable of running a re-election campaign expressed his relief in an MSNBC op-ed Sunday evening that Biden had given Harris his full support.
“I think many Democrats who went back and forth on this issue this weekend felt a tremendous amount of relief, because Democrats clearly believe Biden has done a great job – he has a great record, along with Kamala Harris,” Scarborough wrote . “And as he said, it is imperative that the Democratic Party, if they are to defeat Donald Trump, come together as one.”
“Morning Joe” also made headlines last week when, following the assassination attempt on Donald Trump last weekend, the show was canceled from the schedule for Monday. Scarborough spoke out against this when the show resumed on Tuesday, saying he was “very surprised” and “very disappointed” by the decision.
“The next time we’re told there’s going to be a news feed that replaces us, we’ll be sitting in our seats,” Scarborough said. “And the news feed will be ours, or they can get someone else to host this show.”