Former President Barack Obama’s chief campaign strategist David Axelrod and CNN’s senior political commentator Scott Jennings clashed Wednesday evening over how President Joe Biden arrived at his decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race.
Axelrod and Jennings appeared on “Anderson Cooper 360” to discuss their reactions to Biden’s first speech following his decision to end his reelection bid for the 2024 race. During the discussion the two panelists got into a debate over how Biden came to the decision as Jennings had called out the pressure Biden received from his own party and political pundits following his poor debate performance.
However, Axelrod had pushed back on Jennings’ comment stating Biden wasn’t “toppled by party bosses,” and asking the senior political commentator to show the president “grace.”
“I think what you’re asking Republicans to do is to overlook a lot of dishonesty that came right out of this White House. They came right out of the vice president. People who worked for him, his family, other Democrats, Democrats in Congress. You‘re asking the country to overlook a lot of dishonesty about Joe Biden‘s abilities, capabilities, his capacity to serve for another four years and so on,” Jennings said.
“Are you talking about Biden or Trump?” Anderson jumped in. “Literally Democrats make the same argument.”
“I‘m talking about Joe Biden. He did arrive at this decision with a little push, not just from the goodness of his own heart, but you have to admit —” Jennings said.
Axelrod then cut off Jennings to state how Biden’s decision was a reflection of how the American voters were feeling, before pivoting to calling out Jennings on his party’s alliance with former President Donald Trump.
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“He concluded that this was a — the party bosses were reflecting the consensus of the American people who made a judgment. But Scott, I mean, there‘s so many Republicans who I talked to who are overlooking far more than this. And they‘ll tell you that about Donald Trump,” Axelrod said.
“You talk about deposing a president that‘s exactly what he tried to do, overturn a free and fair election. A lot of Republicans know that they‘ve said it, and yet they‘re setting that aside,” Axelrod continued. “So I don‘t think — you‘re not on a strong footing here in making this argument.”
Jennings pushed back on Axelrod arguing how “weird” the withdrawal from Biden was as he highlighted how Biden “won the primary without a serious challenge.”
“My argument is simply that when you‘re trying to make a judgment between two parties here, I fully and freely admit that both parties have warts. But we‘re acting like there‘s no warts on this situation. This is weird,” Jennings said.
“He won the primary without a serious challenge. He told us all he could serve. His party told us he could serve and he’s clearly diminished,” Jennings continued. “And I think he ultimately arrived in the right spot as you know on the night of the debate I said this candidacy has fallen. He ultimately got here, but it was pretty torturous how they got here. And I think a lot of people burned a lot of credibility on the road to getting here.”
Biden addressed the nation Tuesday evening after releasing a letter on X (formerly known as Twitter) to withdraw from the race stating he believed it was best for the country and his party if he were to focus on the remainder of his term.
The decision from Biden comes as over 30 Democratic lawmakers publicly came against the president to ask for him to step aside. Despite the calls, Biden and his staff had remained firm in their campaign, with the president suggesting the lawmakers could “run” against him at the Democratic National Convention in August.
In addition to the lawmakers, Biden received major backlash from political pundits and major Democratic donors as they announced their decision to freeze roughly $90 million to the largest pro-Biden super PAC on July 12.
Since the move, Biden has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris who received the required amount of delegates on Tuesday in order to be considered the party’s presumptive presidential nominee.
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