Maryland governor Wes Moore criticized his fellow Democrats on Sunday over their public calls for President Biden to end his reelection bid earlier this month, saying the president “deserved better.”
Biden dropped out of the presidential race last weekend and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris after he faced a public pressure campaign from Democratic lawmakers and pundits to step aside amid concerns about his age and mental fitness.
“I had private conversations with the president. And I’m a big believer that when you care about somebody, you tell them the truth,” the Maryland Democrat told ABC’s This Week. “And I had private conversations where I was telling the president the truth.”
“I also know that the president deserved better than people who were running around him and going into public and demanding that the president of the United States step down, particularly when you look at the track record of the Biden-Harris administration,” he continued. “I’ve had a phenomenal partner in the Biden-Harris administration to be able to deliver the kind of results that we needed in Maryland. And so I knew that if he said that he was going to continue pushing forward, that I was going to stand with him.”
More than 30 members of Congress had called for Biden to exit the race before the president made his announcement that he was ending his campaign in a social-media post on Sunday.
While defending his mental acuity in recent weeks, he continued to make gaffes in interviews and public appearances, at times offering confusing, rambling responses to journalists’ questions. He accidentally introduced Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin” during the NATO summit and referred to Harris as “Trump” during a rare solo press conference.
Meanwhile, what could’ve been a contested nomination fight quickly became a coronation for Harris, who immediately secured support from Democratic delegates, party leaders, and would-be rivals in the wake of Biden’s decision to bow out.
Harris received key endorsements from Biden, former President Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, former president Barack Obama and Michelle Obama.
In a little over 24 hours after Biden dropped out, Harris had received pledges from enough Democratic delegates to become the party’s nominee. And the campaign says it pulled in more than $100 million in donations between Sunday afternoon and Monday evening.