Donald Trump delivered a brutal assessment of Joe Biden’s performance against him in last week’s presidential debate, calling the president a “broken-down pile of crap” teetering on the verge of “quitting the race” in a video provided by a source to The Daily Beast.
“He just quit, you know—he’s quitting the race,” Trump says, sitting in a golf cart. “I got him out of the—and that means we have Kamala.”
Later in the clip, he fawns over Chinese President Xi Jinping, calling him “a fierce man, very tough guy” whom Biden may be unable to handle.
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It was not immediately clear where or when exactly the footage was covertly filmed.
In the video, the former president asks the person holding the camera what they thought of his own debate performance. As he’s told he did “fantastic” and “amazing,” Trump blusters on flatly, “Look at that old, broken down pile of crap.
“It’s a bad guy,” he says, seemingly referring to Biden. After announcing that the president is quitting and handing the baton to Kamala Harris, Trump continues, “I think she’s gonna be better” as an opponent.
“She’s so bad. She’s so pathetic,” he adds, plucking at his gloves, then appears to say, “She’s so fucking bad.”
Trump then switches back to Biden, asking, “Can you imagine that guy dealing with Putin? And the president of China—who’s a fierce person. He’s a fierce man, very tough guy. And they see him.”
Before driving off, the former president reiterates, “But they just announced he’s probably quitting. Just keep knocking him out, huh?”
Reached for comment on Wednesday evening, Trump campaign spokesperson Stephen Cheung directed The Daily Beast to a statement issued earlier in the day on the “total collapse” of the Democratic Party.
“Every Democrat who is calling on Crooked Joe Biden to quit was once a supporter of Biden and his failed policies that lead to extreme inflation, an open border, and chaos at home and abroad,” read the statement, attributed to campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles.
“Make no mistake that Democrats, the mainstream media, and the swamp colluded to hide the truth from the American public—Joe Biden is weak, failed, dishonest, and not fit for the White House,” it continued. “Every one of them has lied about Joe Biden’s cognitive state and supported his disastrous policies over the past four years, especially Cackling Copilot Kamala Harris.”
The statement ended by announcing that Trump “will beat any Democrat on November 5th because he has a proven record and an agenda to Make America Great Again.”
A White House spokesperson referred The Daily Beast to Biden’s campaign team, which issued a statement clapping back at Trump later on Wednesday night.
“No, Donald,” the campaign said. “What is bad is taking away women’s rights, what is bad is losing an election and encouraging a violent mob to attack the Capitol, what is bad is assaulting women, what is bad is not paying your taxes, what is bad is rooting for our economy to fail…”
The anaphora went on at length, with the campaign going on to ding Trump for, among other things like his hair and golf game, “committing 34 felonies,” “wanting to making yourself a dictator on day one,” and “running on a platform of your revenge and retribution ahead of the what is best for our country.
“Thanks for letting us clear that up for you,” it concluded.
Biden’s camp has denied that he is stepping down, with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre telling reporters on Wednesday that the president is “absolutely not” even considering it.
Still, he has confided to key allies behind closed doors that he knows his performance over the next few days will be critical if he has any hope of salvaging his campaign, according to The New York Times. (A spokesperson for the Biden campaign forcefully denied this, calling the Times story “false.”)
The president met with 24 Democratic governors at the White House on Wednesday night to try and assuage their fears. He also has campaign stops in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin scheduled in the coming days.
“He knows if he has two more events like that, we’re in a different place” by the end of the week, a Biden ally told the Times, referring to his dead-on-arrival performance in last Thursday’s debate.
Sharing a stage with Trump for the first time since 2020, Biden meandered and faltered his way through the debate, spouting incoherencies and at one point squabbling with the presumptive Republican nominee over golf handicaps.
The fallout has seen the release of several new polls reflecting the growing concern that Biden won’t be able to beat Trump in November, let alone lead the country for four more years.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that one in three Democrats think that he should quit, while a CNN survey found that voters favor Trump over Biden by six percentage points, 49 percent to 43 percent. Both polls were released on Tuesday.
By Wednesday, at least two Democrats on Capitol Hill—Rep. Raúl Grijalva (AZ) and Rep. Lloyd Doggett (TX)—had publicly called for Biden to drop out. A number of prominent Biden donors have also emerged to express doubts about his viability as a candidate.
With worries about Biden’s mental and physical acuity snowballing, the conversation has swung toward his second-in-command, Vice President Kamala Harris, with a growing contingent of fans—the so-called KHive—both ironically and sincerely spreading her gospel online.
Post-debate polling reflects a similar groundswell of support for Harris, with the Reuters survey showing 81 percent of Democratic respondents view Harris favorably, compared to 78 percent for Biden. The CNN poll showed the vice president closing the gap with Trump, trailing him 47 percent to 45 percent, a result within the margin of error.
The vice president, for her part, has come out swinging for Biden, defending him both publicly and privately in the days since the debate. On Wednesday, she reportedly told staffers, “We will not back down. We will follow our president’s lead.”
