Former US President Barack Obama’s public backing of the incumbent was “disingenuous,” according to the journalist
American conservative journalist Tucker Carlson claims that former US President Barack Obama has privately told Democrats that incumbent Joe Biden has no chance of being reelected after his recent debate against GOP frontrunner Donald Trump. Carlson asserts that Obama’s recent public endorsement of Biden was insincere.
Biden and Trump faced off in an open debate on Thursday night, with the president’s performance widely seen as “incoherent” and “fumbling,” highlighting concerns about his age. Following the debate, reports emerged of many Democrats and their donors scrambling to find a replacement for Biden as the party’s presumptive presidential nominee.
Publicly, however, many Democratic heavyweights, including Obama, reaffirmed their support for Biden. While acknowledging that “bad debate nights happen,” the former president insisted that “this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself.”
Writing on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, Carlson, citing an “unusually good source,” alleged that Obama’s post had been “disingenuous.”
“In private, Obama is telling people Biden can’t win, and he is therefore in favor of an open convention,” the journalist claimed. He added that Obama isn’t specifying who he supports but recently met with Biden in person to convey this message.
Carlson also claimed that the relationship between Obama and Biden – who served as vice president between 2009 and 2017 – has never been genuinely warm, and at times was even “hostile.” According to the journalist, those ties “recently… deteriorated further,” primarily due to First Lady Jill Biden, who allegedly “kept her husband cloistered away from anyone who might convince him to drop out” of the race for the White House after the disastrous debate.
Carlson added that Biden’s wife remains “the driving force behind her husband’s reelection campaign,” echoing a recent NBC report naming her as the only person who could convince the president to “change course.”
However, CNN reported on Monday that Biden’s family, including Jill, had urged him not to end his campaign, attributing his poor performance to his team.
While the Biden-Obama relationship has often been portrayed as a “bromance” to the point of becoming meme material, numerous media reports have indicated that the reality is more complex. An Axios report in March suggested that Biden “often measures himself” against his predecessor, with a rivalry dynamic present in their relationship. According to Politico, Obama also expressed serious concerns about Biden’s ability to win the 2020 election.