PALM BEACH, Florida — Former President Donald Trump told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview at his luxurious seaside resort Mar-a-Lago that he expects to face neither incumbent Democrat President Joe Biden nor incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris in November 2024 in the general election.
Trump said that while he does “hope” that Biden hangs on on the Democrat side to win his party’s nomination, he “can’t believe he’s going to be the nominee.”
“He’s a cheater. He’s a scoundrel. He’s a bad guy,” Trump told Breitbart News of Biden. “But in his life, he’s always been able to convince people he’s this really nice guy. I laugh when they say, ‘Trump is the evil one, and he’s the nice one.’ That’s the one thing he’s been able to do. All you have to do is look at his credentials. When you compare him today to 15 or 20 years ago, he’s a different kind of a guy. The guy can’t talk. The guy can’t put two sentences together. So I do think this: I cannot believe he’s going to be the nominee. I hope he is. But I can’t believe he’s going to be the nominee.”
Trump’s comments came during a lengthy interview, which was more than two hours long, at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday evening. They come just weeks from the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries, where Trump is dominating in GOP polling leading all his intra-party challengers significantly. If Trump is able to lock down victories in both — the Iowa caucuses come on January 15, and the New Hampshire primary is eight days later — he will, in all likelihood, emerge from these contests as the presumptive GOP nominee for president in 2024. This broader interview with Breitbart News focused on his plans to win the general election in 2024 assuming he gets the nomination again, major issues he intends to tackle should he win back the presidency, as well as the future of the populist right both here in the United States and abroad.
Asked who he thinks will replace Biden on the Democrat side atop the ticket, Trump said he did not know but that he does not think Harris will make it either. He said some Democrats will argue that if not Biden, it has to be Harris because of the promise Biden made to Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) to pick a black woman as his running mate — which was essential for Clyburn’s backing in 2020 that helped Biden secure the nomination with a resounding victory in the Democrat primary in South Carolina. But Trump said he thinks that Harris’s weaknesses as evidenced by her failures on major national policy items will prove too daunting for Democrats and that they will need to drop her as well.
“I don’t know,” Trump said. “There’s a whole thing that it has to be Kamala because of the whole deal with [Clyburn]. I don’t think they’ll get her by.”
Asked later in the interview again what he thinks happens among Democrats if they ditch both Biden and Harris from the ticket, and who replaces them, Trump again said he is unsure who might emerge but said he thinks it will be a “free-for-all” among Democrats to try to seize the top spot on the ballot.
“That I can’t tell you,” Trump said. “There will be a point at which it’s a free-for-all.”
“I don’t think that Biden will make it to the gate,” Trump added.
Much more from Trump’s latest interview with Breitbart News is forthcoming.
