On "Forbes Newsroom," Steve Forbes gave his take on President Biden dropping out of the 2024 presidential election, something he has long predicted, whether Vice President Kamala Harris has a chance to win, and what may come next.
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00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis with Forbes Breaking News. Joining me now is Steve Forbes.
00:08Steve, thanks so much for coming in once again. Good to be with you, especially on a day like
00:12this. Another unprecedented day. But a day that you've been predicting now for over a year,
00:18President Joe Biden did officially step down from the 2024 race. What are your thoughts?
00:25It had to happen. It was very clear over two and a half years ago
00:28that he was suffering mental deterioration. And unfortunately, medicine has found no way
00:34to stop it or reverse it. And what the real scandal is, is it was covered up.
00:40Political press corps mostly, for the most part, ignored it. Democratic leaders in Congress
00:45ignored it. The White House suppressed it. They did everything they could to make it look like
00:50he could go. It was amazing that they could get him through one term. But the idea that he would
00:55then go for a second term, that is even the bigger scandal. So it had to happen. And the
01:02question now is, where do they go from here? We're already beginning to get the outlines of it. And
01:06one thing was very interesting. He did that original letter, released that letter on Sunday,
01:12and then shortly after released the endorsement of Kamala Harris as vice president. There's a
01:18little history on that. He was the vice president, obviously, under Barack Obama. In 2016,
01:24Biden wanted to run for president. And Barack Obama, in the most humiliating way possible,
01:30quashed Joe Biden's aspirations to run for president, said it's going to be Hillary,
01:35and did so in a way that both he, Biden, and his wife, Dr. Jill, have never forgotten,
01:43never will forget. So he made sure when he withdrew, I don't know whether they intended to do
01:49it this soon, but endorse her now. And Barack Obama's clumsy attempt to try to create a condition
01:57where perhaps Michelle Obama could run, or somebody else could plausibly run, was quashed.
02:04And what also this shows is that former President Obama, when it comes to that kind
02:10of political maneuvering, is not very good. He's no Franklin Roosevelt, a four-term president,
02:16who was a master at it. Just one quick story on that. In 1944, in the midst of World War II,
02:22Roosevelt was running for a fourth term. He wanted to get rid of his vice president,
02:26a man named Henry Wallace. And Roosevelt did it in a way where there are no fingerprints
02:32on it at all. He told Wallace to his face several times, if I were a delegate to the convention,
02:37I'd be supporting you. And yet he maneuvered him in a way in which Wallace was dumped,
02:42and Harry Truman, whom they called the Missouri Compromise, senator from Missouri,
02:46became vice president and then president. So Obama so far has batted zero in terms of guiding
02:55the party, and Biden was going to make sure he was going to have Kamala Harris on the top of that
03:01ticket. And if it looked like somebody was going to seriously challenge Kamala Harris, I believed
03:07that Biden would have resigned the presidency, made her the incumbent, and there was no way
03:13a Democratic convention was going to go against an incumbent president of their own party.
03:19You bring up a really interesting point about former President Obama, and that is he did not
03:25endorse Vice President Kamala Harris either when he was writing his statement about President Biden
03:31stepping down from 2024. So what do you think is next? Because Democrats largely coalesced
03:37around Vice President Kamala Harris to be the presumptive nominee. Some have called for an open
03:42convention. What does it look like between now and the convention? Well, there's just no time.
03:49You can make a case that if they had a normal primary season, Kamala Harris wouldn't have done
03:54much better than she did when she ran in 2020, had a dropout in 2019 before the first vote was cast.
04:01But now they have her. And so they're making the best of what they thought would be an unlikely
04:07situation. So it's going to be very hard for somebody to openly go and challenge her. So she
04:12has to defeat herself between now and the end of the month. And that's not likely to happen. So
04:18unless she did something crazy and they said, oh, oops, let's get another one. It's not going to
04:25happen. She she she she she'll be the Democratic nominee. And the question is, who will be the
04:31running mate? And who is going to weigh in on that? Who is going to be the running mate? What
04:36do you think that looks like? Because now some names being floated around are some moderate
04:42governors. What do you think of those selections? Well, moderate governors by Democratic Party
04:47standards. Now, let's make that clear. There were no no big tax cutters in the list I saw.
04:53And the one of the names mentioned, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania,
04:57kibosh school choice after indicating during his campaign that he was in favor of some sort of
05:04school choice. So I think it's going to be a moderate because they want a governor who has
05:11nothing to do with this Washington, nothing to do with this administration. And we can plausibly
05:18people say, OK, governor experience knows how to run things. So Governor Cooper of North Carolina,
05:25I think since North Carolina, even though Republicans almost always carry it, it's by a
05:30very narrow margin. It's never one you can count on. You have to work hard to get it. So that would
05:37be a choice for the Democrats would think to put put North Carolina into play. The governor of
05:44Kentucky this year, red state been elected twice as governor. But I don't think they think he could
05:51bring Kentucky with them. And so it'll probably be somebody like Roy Cooper of North Carolina.
05:59And the fact that nobody's heard of him actually in the Democrats mind will be a plus because no
06:06invisible baggage aside from Kamala Harris being the vice president, being number two in the Biden
06:12administration. I mean, does she carry that with her, that type of baggage, if you will? Because
06:18can Republicans then in this election be like she is just Biden Jr. Aside from the age thing with
06:26Biden, they can just say that they are Republicans. You're right. The Republicans will certainly go and
06:33say she can't wash her hands of everything that's gone wrong, but never underestimate
06:38chutzpah in politics. She said in a speech today on Monday, she proclaimed that Biden has the best
06:47legacy of a president in modern times, best since Franklin Roosevelt. And when you do that with a
06:54straight face, given what's happened with inflation, given what's happened with the border, given what's
06:59happened with the punk growth of the economy, given the serious deterioration we have overseas
07:06and in many, many theaters, that's quite a bold statement, bold statement to make.
07:12So what they're going to do ultimately is try to make this an election about personalities.
07:18And this is where the Republicans have to focus on issues and not get in the trenches fighting
07:25the Democrats on personalities, but focus on issues. Who's likely to cut your taxes? Who's
07:31likely to raise your taxes? Who's going to save your traditional automobile? Who's going to save
07:37your gas stove? One of the great issues is pointing out that Harris and the others are attacking
07:43every modern convenience. They don't formally ban them, but they put regulations where you
07:48either can't buy them or they don't work very well anymore. The RNC was in Milwaukee last week, and a
07:55lot of the speeches we saw coming out of there is that the GOP platform this time around is way
08:01better than four more years of President Biden. So how do you see Republicans' messaging change
08:07now that it isn't President Biden running again? It's the Biden team. You can ask,
08:13who was running the White House as his mental acuity declined? Who were the real players?
08:20Who were the real power wielders? And so Kamala Harris is going to say, oh, I knew nothing about
08:25this. I was powerless. Well, that doesn't say very good things about her. So she can't walk
08:31away. It's going to be very difficult for her, which is why they're going to try to hit Donald
08:36Trump, the devil incarnate, because if it focuses on the Biden administration, they lose and lose
08:42big. And there's no way she can walk away from it. Michelle Obama could conceivably wash her hands of
08:48it. But even she would have to answer questions about, do you favor forcing people into EVs?
08:55And that's why and that's why, again, they want at least a VP candidate, the Democrats,
09:01who has none of the baggage from the Biden administration, which is very real.
09:06What we saw over the past two weeks was a united Republican Party in the wake of the
09:11assassination attempt of Donald Trump. We saw ever since, really, the presidential debate,
09:18a chaotic, panicked Democratic Party. But within the past 24 hours since President Biden did drop
09:25out, Kamala Harris did raise 81 million dollars, record breaking there. Do you think, A, that this
09:32energized the Democratic base? And B, should Republicans be worried? Well, given the crazy
09:38times we live in, the Republicans should not take this election for granted. And there was a little
09:44bit of that complacency, a little bit of the celebration after Milwaukee. But even Donald
09:51Trump warned at a rally this past weekend, don't be complacent. We've got an election in front of
09:57us. And make no mistake, they're going to hit the Republicans on Donald Trump, the devil. They're
10:04going to hit him on abortion. They're going to hit him on, oh, they're going to take away your
10:08health care. Expect to see ads again with grandma in a wheelchair being wheeled off a cliff. Oh,
10:14they're going to take away Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. Oh, they're going to these evil
10:19people. So those attacks, even though there'll be little truth in them, are going to be huge. And
10:25that's why the Republicans have to be prepared on issues and not get into personalities and ask
10:31those questions. Were you better off under Trump before COVID hit? Were you better off under Joe
10:37Biden? Who's going to let you keep your dishwasher? Who's going to let you keep your washing machine,
10:42gas stove and the like? One of the biggest takeaways of the past really few weeks,
10:49you could go back a few years, is that we're living in these unprecedented times. And we
10:53thought this was going to be a 2020 rematch, obviously, with this shakeup that has blown
10:59this election wide open. There's a lot of what we don't know. What do you think the biggest
11:05takeaway is here? What are you looking out for next? Well, I think what what how how is this
11:11campaign once the Democrats decide who they're going to run? How is this campaign going to be
11:17conducted? And the Democrats are going to want to drag it down because they are vulnerable on
11:22many issues. You can't walk away from what's happened to the border. You can't walk away
11:27from the fact that prices are higher. Yeah, the economy is growing the best in the world. Yeah,
11:32because the world stinks right now in terms of overall growth. So most people don't feel the
11:40country is going in the right direction. And traditionally, if people don't feel the country
11:45is going in the right direction, the party in power loses. And something that by the way,
11:52one of the things that could happen, you may get a foreign crisis, Iran may decide to do something
11:57crazy, you may get a war, which is going to come. It's just a matter of time in northern Israel,
12:04southern Lebanon against Hezbollah, that that's going to be very hard to avoid. And that could
12:10blow up in the next few months. So there'll be a crisis there. And that then gets again to the
12:16question, is Joe Biden up to the job? And how much will that impact Vice President Kamala Harris
12:23should an international crisis rise up? I think they will give her prominence in what they call
12:30the situation room. They'll try to have Biden there looking like he's in charge and restrict
12:37the pictures that can be taken. And she'll be seen as asking the questions. They'll stage it.
12:43They'll know in advance what they're going to do. But they will stage manage a situation room,
12:49coping with the crisis and showing her being decisive crisis manager, whatever you thought
12:55about her as vice president, as a president, she can rise to the occasion. So but the question is,
13:01what are they actually going to do about it? Because the team he has in place now,
13:05that Biden has in place now, has botched just about everything. Their Iran policy.
13:11Oh, we can appease Iran. We saw how that turned out of the his is his national security advisor
13:17had a magazine article come out just before October 7th, saying things are now quiet in the
13:22Middle East. Whoa. And China, are they calming down to ask the Philippine fishermen when China
13:29decides they're not allowed to fish in international waters? Would you say or would you think that a
13:36Kamala Harris presidency is essentially a Biden presidency to point out with all of this
13:43administration and the cabinet in place? Or do we know that yet? Well, I think given her record in
13:49the past, given what's happened in this administration, you would say it is two point.
13:54Oh, and one of the things that she's going to have to demonstrate, I think, to appeal to
13:58independents and to people in the swing states that there's more to her. She just isn't a California
14:05lefty that she's got to demonstrate. How do you sort of separate yourself from what Biden did
14:12or and you're going to have something different in the future without looking like you're being
14:16disloyal. And I'm old enough to remember 1968 when Lyndon Johnson, the president, withdrew.
14:23His vice president got the nomination, Hubert Humphrey, and he gave a very skillful speech
14:28finally at the end of September where people could nuance and say he's going to have a different
14:34Vietnam War policy than the incumbent. And that's when his campaign, which looks hopeless,
14:40turned around and he came within an eyelash of winning the presidency.
14:44So she have those skills, those political skills to show people it's not just going to be a carbon
14:52copy, but they're going to be positive things and pleasantly surprising things that might come if
14:57she wins. And if she doesn't do that, is that really where the VP choice comes in, where that
15:04person can distance him or herself away from the Biden administration? Well, the VP candidate can
15:10come across as somebody, oh, this is somebody we wish was at the top of the ticket. But
15:16traditionally, a strong VP candidate cannot save a weak top candidate. Back in 1988,
15:23Governor of Massachusetts Michael Dukakis picked Lloyd Benson from Texas, a conservative Democrat.
15:30Everyone oohed and aahed what a great choice it was, but it didn't do Dukakis any good when
15:35Dukakis made mistakes on the campaign trail and George H.W. Bush won that election in a landslide.
15:42So it begins at the top. And what you don't want is a number two who's looking like he or
15:49she is disloyal. That is poison that you can't be trusted because they don't want somebody,
15:57number one wants a number two who's going to be maneuvering at your expense. Last thing they want,
16:04they want loyalty. Steve, when you're looking at President Biden, you're looking at someone who
16:09has been in politics for decades from senator, vice president. He's run for president a handful
16:15of times, is now a one term president. What do you think his legacy is going to be after dropping out
16:21of the race on Sunday? His legacy would have been a little more benign if he had done what he should
16:31have done last fall, which was say or have people say he's the greatest progressive president since
16:37Franklin Roosevelt. And he could say time to pass a torch on to a new generation. I've done my part
16:44getting the country blah, blah, blah, and then pulling out and having a genuine contest for the
16:50party's nomination. And selfishly they did not do that. And it's cost him his reputation, it's cost
16:57the party, and now they hope they can put some pieces together before November. And in terms of
17:03the legacy as president, it's, I'll be blunt, it's dreadful. They made huge mistakes on energy,
17:13huge mistakes on the border, opening up the border. In terms of foreign policy,
17:20what they did in Afghanistan led to Ukraine. And in Ukraine, they never supplied the weaponry that
17:26Ukraine needed where they could have won the war in 2022 or even 2023. It's kept giving them enough
17:34to keep them in the fight, but not enough to win and throw the Putin's invaders out. On China,
17:41our navy today is shrinking. China now has more warships. First time in 100 years a country's had
17:47more warships than we have. And we don't have the capacity to make them in numbers anymore.
17:54So when you examine the whole thing, whether it's defending the realm, defense, and doing
18:02here at home, the massive regulations, it's nonstop. And the Supreme Court's put a break on
18:10some of them, but even on student debt. What example is he setting when he's been overruled
18:15that he says, well, I'm going to file, I'm going to do it anyway. It's not a healthy legacy.
18:22Well, Steve, I appreciate you coming in, talking more about this historic moment we're in,
18:27and I hope you come back and join me anytime.
18:29Look forward to it. Thank you, Brittany.