President Biden is no longer running for reelection, but former president Donald Trump and his Republican allies seem determined to keep him in the spotlight for weeks to come.
For years, the GOP laid the groundwork for an election centered on Biden, his record and his fitness for office. Now that his reelection bid is over — and Vice President Harris is the likely Democratic nominee — Republicans are not entirely moving on.
Trump bashed Biden repeatedly during a rally Wednesday in North Carolina, his first rally since Biden’s withdrawal. He took to social media to criticize Biden’s speech later Wednesday about his decision to not seek reelection. And as Republicans everywhere look to tie Harris to Biden, the president’s name is bound to keep coming up.
Trump expressed frustration this week about having to suddenly change focus from Biden, days after the Republican National Convention.
“So, we are forced to spend time and money on fighting Crooked Joe Biden, he polls badly after having a terrible debate, and quits the race. Now we have to start all over again,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform, asking whether the GOP should be “reimbursed for fraud.”
To be sure, Republicans have started recalibrating for Harris. Trump unloaded a fresh barrage of attacks against Harris at the Charlotte rally, and a pro-Trump super PAC is spending millions of dollars on new ads targeting Harris.
But the specter of Biden still looms large. He has promised to finish his term and remain president for the next six months, and he has said he will campaign with Harris ahead of the November election.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Biden said Monday in a surprise call to campaign staff.
Biden’s Wednesday night speech — in which he said he was stepping aside in “defense of democracy” — prompted a new wave of GOP focus on him. Trump’s campaign aides circulated photos of a scowling Trump watching the speech from his plane after the Charlotte rally.
“On Trump Force One …Hey Joe …You’re Fired!” top Trump strategist Chris LaCivita said on X.
Trump railed against Biden’s speech as “terrible” during a Fox News interview the next morning. And he made multiple Truth Social media posts responding to the speech, calling it “DISMAL” and mocking media outlets for coverage that he said made it seem like Biden “was the equivalent of the Late, Great Winston Churchill.”
Trump followed up one of the missives by posting a large graphic of a ghoul under the heading, “Tales from the Crypt.”
Trump and his advisers privately wanted Biden to stay in the race, liking their chances against an unpopular 81-year-old president whose party was in disarray. Biden was also a known entity for their party, with nearly 100 percent name ID among GOP voters in the latest Quinnipiac University poll.
In a Wednesday memo, Harris’s campaign argued Harris, with her lower profile, “opens up additional persuadable voters.”
“This race is more fluid now — the Vice President is well-known but less well-known than both Trump and President Biden, particularly among Dem-leaning constituencies,” Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said.
The candidate swap has touched off a GOP scramble to define her with persuadable voters before she can — and Trump is seeking to do his part.
“For 3½ years,” Trump said in Charlotte, “lying Kamala Harris has been the ultra-liberal driving force behind every single Biden catastrophe.”
Isaac Arnsdorf contributed to this report.