Former President Donald Trump said Monday night he doesn’t think President Joe Biden will drop his reelection bid amid concerns about his age, saying his competitor has an “ego” and “nobody wants to give up that way.”
Trump spoke to Fox News host Sean Hannity as Biden seeks to staunch his political losses in Washington this week following the president’s troubling performance at their debate matchup last month.
“It looks to me like he may very well stay in. He’s got an ego and he doesn’t want to quit,” Trump said. “He doesn’t want to do that. It looks to me like that’s what he wants.
“Nobody wants to give that up that way, he’s going to feel badly about himself for a long time,” Trump continued. “It’s hard to give it up that way, the way where they’re trying to force him out.”
Biden has met with Democratic leaders in recent days and had a private meeting with the powerful Congressional Black Caucus on Monday night. He has vowed to stay in the race and shut down calls from some lawmakers that he end his bid, saying he is “not going anywhere.”
![Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump listens to questions during a presidential debate with President Joe Biden.](https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/668ccea12200003100bd03e2.jpeg?ops=scalefit_720_noupscale)
AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File
The Biden campaign hit back at Trump after the interview, saying the presumptive GOP nominee remained a “habitual liar” and “a 34-time convicted criminal still running on his Project 2025 agenda to destroy America.”
“Most importantly, still going to lose this November,” James Singer, a Biden campaign spokesman, told media outlets.
Hannity went on to ask the former president how he’d feel about running against another competitor should Biden exit the race, namely Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump said his team had “prepared” to face Biden, but he didn’t think it would ultimately matter who the Democratic nominee was.
“I think that it will be her, I think they are very concerned about the vote if it’s not her,” Trump said of the Democratic Party. “I’ve actually come to believe that’s what they’re going to do, I think she’s an ineffective person. She hasn’t done a good job on a lot of things.”
Trump has been largely out of the spotlight in the days after the debate as Republicans have capitalized on Biden’s political misfortune. The former president has had a series of court victories following his indictment on all counts in his Manhattan hush money trial, including a win in his Supreme Court immunity case and the delay of his sentencing in New York following his conviction.