Pete Buttigieg, who served as Transportation secretary in former President Joe Biden's administration, said the former president should not have run for a second term last year.
Appearing Sunday on "Meet the Press," he said that Biden should have stepped out sooner.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris detailed the same in a new book, "108 Days," in which she wrote that Biden's decision to run for reelection was "reckless."
"He should not have run," Buttigieg said. "And if he had made that decision sooner, we might have been better off. But it literally was his decision. Nobody else was able to make that decision.
"And now in front of us, we're confronted with the decisions that come next, whether that's inside of a political party or movement or as we're all weighing right now, in our own lives, as Americans, as a country. And that's where we've got to focus."
Biden dropped his reelection bid last summer after a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump. Harris stepped in but was ultimately defeated by Trump. Buttigieg said he had no input on whether Biden should have sought reelection.
"He made that decision, and I think I'm not alone in believing that he should have made the decision not to run sooner," Buttigieg said.
After the release of excerpts of Harris' new book "108 Days," aides to Biden were quick to bash his former running mate.
"Vice President Harris was simply not good at the job," a former White House official told Axios. "She had basically zero substantive role in the administration's key work streams, and instead would just dive bomb in for stilted photo ops that exposed how out of depth she was. Biden is not the reason she struggled in office or tanked her campaigns. The independent variable there is the vice president."
Sam Barron ✉
Sam Barron has almost two decades of experience covering a wide range of topics including politics, crime and business.
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