(Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he expected President Joe Biden to remain in the race for the White House despite growing calls within Biden’s Democratic Party for him to step aside for a younger nominee.
Trump, 78, said on Monday that Biden, 81, would refuse to quit the campaign because of his ego and noted that the president had the Democratic nomination locked up because of all the convention delegates he won during the Democratic primary elections earlier this year.
Biden has repeatedly said he is staying in the race.
“Interestingly, he’s got a lot of power, because he’s got the delegates. You know, when you have the delegates, unless he says, ‘I’m getting out,’ they can’t do anything to get him out other than the 25th amendment,” Trump told interviewer Sean Hannity in a telephone call broadcast on Fox News.
The 25th amendment of the U.S. constitution enables the vice president and cabinet members to declare the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office, transferring the job to the vice president as acting president. There is no indication Vice President Kamala Harris or top Democrats have advanced that option.
“He’s got an ego, and he doesn’t want to quit. He doesn’t want to do that. It just looks to me like that’s what he wants,” Trump said of his rival, who unseated Trump when the former president ran for re-election in 2020.
The interview came amid turmoil for Democrats following Biden’s disastrous debate against Trump on June 27, which has prompted growing calls within his party for him to withdraw from the campaign.
Trump’s interview contradicted casual statements captured on video recently, when Trump falsely told supporters at one of his golf courses that he had driven Biden out of the race.
“He’s quitting the race … I got him out,” Trump says in a video published by the Daily Beast on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; editing by Miral Fahmy)
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