Former President Trump said President Biden ‘was not fit to run for president’ and is not — and ‘never was’ fit to serve. 

The Republican presidential nominee was reacting to Biden’s stunning announcement Sunday afternoon that he is suspending his re-election campaign. 

‘He is the worst president in the history of our country,’ Trump told Fox News Digital in a phone interview Sunday afternoon. ‘There has never been a president so bad.’ 

‘He is not fit to serve,’ Trump continued. ‘And I ask — who is going to be running the country for the next five months?’ 

Trump also posted on his Truth Social Sunday afternoon. 

‘Crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for President, and is certainly not fit to serve — And never was!’ Trump posted to his Truth Social. ‘He only attained the position of President by lies, Fake News, and not leaving his Basement.’ 

Trump said that ‘all those around him, including his Doctor and the Media, knew that he wasn’t capable of being President, and he wasn’t.’ 

‘Now, look what he’s done to our Country, with millions of people coming across our Border, totally unchecked and unvetted, many from prisons, mental institutions, and record numbers of terrorists,’ he wrote. ‘We will suffer greatly because of his presidency, but we will remedy the damage he has done very quickly.’ 

He added: ‘MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!’ 

Trump’s comments come one week after he survived an assassination attempt and just days after formally becoming the 2024 Republican presidential nominee. 

Biden announced Sunday that he will suspend his 2024 re-election campaign amid mounting pressure from his Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill, top donors and Hollywood stars after a disastrous debate performance last month.

The unprecedented announcement came as an increasing number of Democrat lawmakers had begun to publicly call for Biden to step aside and the party’s leadership reportedly was engaged in efforts to convince Biden, 81, he could not win in November’s general election against former President Trump, the 2024 GOP nominee who Biden defeated four years ago to win the White House.

‘It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your president,’ Biden wrote in a public letter. ‘While it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interests of my party and the country for me to stand down and focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term.’

Biden said he will formally address the nation later this week about his decision. 

‘For now, let me express my deepest gratitude to all those who have worked so hard to see me reelected,’ Biden wrote. ‘I want to thank Vice President Kamala Harris for being an extraordinary partner in all this work. And let me express my heartfelt appreciation to the American people for the faith and trust you have placed in me.’ 

Biden added: ‘I believe today what I always have: that there is nothing America can’t do — when we do it together. We just have to remember we are the United States of America.’

Biden was diagnosed with COVID-19 on Wednesday, a revelation that came on the heels of several TV interviews and campaign appearances in which the president insisted he was remaining in the race. But the interviews failed to reassure supporters and provided critics — including those on the left — with further evidence that Biden was no longer up to the job.

Biden delivered a strong welcome address to world leaders at last week’s NATO summit in Washington, D.C. The showcase served as an opportunity to prove he was fit to continue his current term and eager and able to lead the nation for another four years.

For a time, it seemed Biden could survive the surge of calls for him to quit the race after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that they backed Biden’s bid. 

But Biden, who has long been known for a propensity to commit gaffes, continued to stumble. His missteps included a glaring error on the world stage at the NATO summit. While speaking on live television, Biden referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as ‘Putin,’ name-checking Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose invasion of Zelenskyy’s Ukraine has precipitated more than two years of hellish war.

Questions over whether Biden would end his campaign remained the top political story heading into last weekend.

But two blockbuster developments in rapid succession — the attempted assassination of Trump at the former president’s rally in western Pennsylvania on Saturday and Trump’s naming Monday at the Republican National Convention of Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate — briefly halted the fervor over Biden for a couple of days.

But the call on Wednesday by Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic Senate nominee in California, for Biden to end his campaign, as well as reporting that top Democrats such as Schumer, Jeffries, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had frank conversations with Biden, quickly reignited the political crisis for the president.

Biden’s stunning announcement occurred during the roughest stretch of what was a more than year-long campaign for a second term. Doubts about his viability at the top of the Democratic Party’s 2024 ticket began seeping out into the mainstream after his halting delivery and awkward answers were placed on full display for a national audience during June’s presidential debate with Trump in Atlanta. 

Top Democratic fundraiser Lindy Li says it is getting more and more difficult to bring in donations for President Biden’s re-election campaign as calls for him to withdraw continue to mount.

Li made the statement during an appearance on Fox News Sunday with host Shannon Bream. Bream pressed Li on whether Biden should stay in the race and whether Vice President Kamala Harris is the right candidate to replace him.

‘Fundraising has — big money fundraising has slowed. People — major donors who have pledged massive amounts of checks, and I’m talking six, seven — seven-figure checks have suddenly disappeared, fallen off the face of the Earth, rescinded their pledges,’ Li said.

‘It’s just hard because a lot of these people are successful business people and they see the election as a business proposition. And they would only bet on a campaign if it’s a winning prospect. But it’s just — I wish I had better news, but I’m also not here to give you talking points. This is just the truth,’ she added.

Bream then asked about Harris and whether she is the best candidate to take Biden’s place if he withdraws.

‘Skipping over Kamala Harris would be political malpractice. Full stop, end of story. The base — our base, Black Americans in particular, is why we defeated Trump at all,’ Li responded.

‘It’s not my place to tell President Biden what to do but if he were to step aside, Vice President Kamala Harris would be an excellent candidate. She’s a consummate prosecutor and she’s out there every single day effectively prosecuting the case, litigating the case against convicted felon Trump,’ she said.

‘It would be a catastrophic mistake to skip over her,’ she said.

While Biden and his staff have publicly insisted that he is staying in the race, the 81-year-old is reportedly now asking whether Harris could win, according to the New York Times. Several polls show Harris matching or even exceeding Biden’s performance against Trump as waves of Democrats call on Biden to withdraw.

Harris stands as the most obvious candidate to replace Biden thanks in large part to her presumed access to the Biden-Harris war chest should the president withdraw. Any other candidate would face an uncertain path to accessing the tens of millions of dollars donated throughout the race.

The White House pushed back on the Times report in a statement to Fox News Digital, saying Biden is locked in on campaigning.

‘That claim is false and The New York Times did not ask us about it. As Jen O’Malley Dillon said, he ‘is more committed than ever.’ And as you heard from the President, he looks forward to campaigning this week,’ said White House spokesman Andrew Bates.

President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race on Sunday, and campaign finance experts say there are financial roadblocks to replacing him as the Democratic nominee.

The Biden-Harris campaign brought in a huge cash haul this cycle, reporting $127 million raised in June alone. But after Biden officially withdrew from the race, there are serious questions about whether another candidate would be able to inherit these funds.

While there are several candidates being floated as a Biden replacement, a political fundraiser with knowledge of presidential campaign finance told Fox News Digital that, as of right now, the money ‘is only accessible if your name is Joe Biden or Kamala Harris.’ 

Election law experts told Fox News Digital that Vice President Harris could likely use the campaign funds given that her name is on the Biden-Harris ticket. However, even the vice president could face hurdles with the money. 

According to Trey Trainor, a commissioner on the Federal Election Commission, it’s an ‘open-ended question’ whether the funds could be transferred to Harris.

When Biden is replaced as the nominee, legal experts tell Fox the Biden-Harris campaign would be allowed to transfer the funds to the Democratic National Committee, but the campaign arm is limited in how it can distribute that money.

Democratic Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg have been floated as potential Biden replacements, but the experts do not believe other candidates would be able to easily obtain the funds.

Biden officially endorsed Harris for the Democratic nomination after announcing his withdrawal from the race.

With only months until the presidential election and once-presumptive nominee President Biden no longer in the race, the next steps for the Democratic Party may seem somewhat unclear. 

Here is what you need to know about the Democratic Party’s nominating process following Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 race. 

Biden was the presumptive nominee for his party, having secured the vast majority of its delegates, which were awarded after primary elections this year. But now that the president has withdrawn, the delegates are no longer pledged to him and are free to vote as they choose.

Now, any eligible candidate can run for the nomination. Vice President Kamala Harris, Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, D-Mich., are often mentioned in the media. If Biden endorses a candidate, that person would have a clear advantage.

In order to become a candidate, someone must receive signatures from at least 300 delegates. A maximum of 50 can come from each state delegation.

To win the nomination, a candidate must receive the vote of a majority of pledged delegates at the party’s roll call vote, which would be 1,976 or more delegates. This is not a ‘popular’ or ‘public’ vote.

The Democratic primaries, which were such votes, have already happened throughout 2024. Biden won almost all those contests and was therefore awarded almost all the pledged Democratic delegates.

The only step left in the process is for delegates to formally nominate a candidate during the party’s ‘roll call vote.’ This is the regular part of the nominating process that would have occurred even without Biden ending his campaign. 

If no candidate reaches a majority in the first round of the roll call, then multiple rounds of voting take place, and superdelegates can also vote. At the Democratic convention a superdelegate is an automatically credentialed delegate — such as party leaders, governors and members of Congress.

No deadlines have passed that would prevent or lock out another eligible Democratic candidate from appearing on a general election ballot.

The Democrats are currently expected to formally nominate a candidate in August but before meeting at their convention, in a ‘virtual’ roll call.

The process and schedule could, however, still change.

A change in candidacy after that point would be settled by the Democratic National Convention. It would certainly be a political disaster and, as time passes, could also present legal and logistical challenges.

President Biden has defiantly remained in the presidential race despite mounting calls from allies to drop out, and speculation that he would bow out as early as this weekend. 

The Biden campaign has hit back against anonymous sources and speculation that Biden would end his campaign in the coming days, suggesting a pressure campaign was building to force Biden’s hand. 

‘There are a lot of anonymous sources out there this week telling y’all what is and isn’t happening on Team Biden-Harris. I’m here – on the record (!) – to give you an overview of what actually happened, what’s to come, and a few thoughts on the very bad things coming out of the Republican National Convention,’ Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Muonoz said in a press release late last week. 

The comment was released shortly following Newsmax’s Mark Halperin reporting that unnamed Democratic sources informed him that Biden will drop out of the race as soon as this weekend, that he would not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris to take the mantle, and would call for an open convention during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month. 

‘It will happen as early as this weekend. A speech has been drafted for him. He will continue on as president, is his intention. He also will not, I’m told, endorse Vice President Harris as his successor. They’re hoping that he will endorse an open process in which the convention will be open to Vice President Harris and a few other candidates in Chicago to pick the Democratic nominee for president,’ Halperin said on Thursday. 

Axios also speculated the president would drop out this weekend, with unnamed Biden aides allegedly saying the president was warming up to the idea of giving into the calls to bow out. 

The Biden campaign, however, has so far not given an inch on the speculation and calls for the president to drop out, with campaign and White House officials shooting down speculation on social media, releasing press releases and continuing to announce fundraising efforts. 

Biden’s deputy campaign manager doubled down on Sunday that reports of the president dropping out are ‘false’ and that Biden has been clear he is remaining in the race. 

‘It is false. And I think that it is false to continue to try to gin up this narrative. Joe Biden has said he is in this race,’ deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said on MSNBC on Sunday. ‘He is in this race to win it. He is instructing us to continue to carry out a plan to make sure that we are communicating [to as] many voters as possible. Actions speak louder than words, although sometimes, in this case, I wish that our words would speak louder so that people would stop asking this question. But we are doing both. The president has doubled down and said that he is running in this race to win it, and that he is not going anywhere.’

Biden is currently self-isolating in his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, after he was diagnosed with COVID-19 on Wednesday. He was diagnosed while in Las Vegas, forcing the campaign to cancel events in the city as the president recovers. 

Thirty-six Democrats have called on Biden to drop out of the race in the days and weeks following his disastrous debate performance, which put his mental fitness under further scrutiny as he stumbled over his words and appeared more subdued than in previous years. 

Ahead of his COVID diagnosis, Biden hit the campaign trail at a faster clip than before the debate, holding rallies and meetings across the nation, coupled with his official duties as president, including hosting world leaders for a NATO summit earlier this month. Biden delivered a stronger than typical speech during the NATO summit, and received mixed reviews for his first solo press conference of the year. The events, however, have evidently not swayed Democrats that he’s up for the job, as traditional allies continue releasing statements calling on him to drop out. 

‘While the choice to withdraw from the campaign is President Biden’s alone, I believe it is time for him to pass the torch. And in doing so, secure his legacy of leadership by allowing us to defeat Donald Trump in the upcoming election,’ California Rep. Adam Schiff said in a statement last week. 

Despite speculation Biden would drop out as soon as this weekend, the New York Times reported that the president will not drop out ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Nentanyahu’s visit to the nation’s capital this week. 

The president also has a fundraiser scheduled with former late night host David Letterman on July 29 in Hawaii and has received support from Squad members to remain in the race. 

‘There have been lots of Democrats who have been giving little anonymous quotes to the press, to some journalist to print, and I’m not here to knock the press on it,’ she said. ‘I’m here to knock my colleagues on it, because to me, I think that’s, and I’m sorry, I’m going to say because it’s after midnight. That’s bulls—. Like, if you have an opinion, say it with your chest and say it in public,’ Squad member, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, said last week in defense of Biden. 

The chair of the Democratic National Committee, Jamie Harrison, has also notably not called for Biden to pull out of the race, instead saying earlier this month that Biden is the party’s nominee.

‘This ain’t the West Wing… we have had a process, millions voted for Joe Biden and we have our nominee!’ Harrison tweeted on July 2.

Biden is not yet the official nominee for the ticket, but is expected to be formally nominated in a virtual roll call on Aug. 7, DNC Rules Committee members voted Friday. The move leaves Democrats with roughly two weeks to rally renewed support for Biden as their nominee, or for Biden to drop out and let another candidate step up to the job. 

The speculation mounting around Biden dropping out comes as former President Trump was officially nominated as the Republican Party’s choice for president. Trump joined the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, last week, where he announced Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate and accepted the nomination. 

The RNC was held just two days after an assassination attempt nearly ended Trump’s life, leaving him with an injury to his right ear. A shooter opened fire on Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last Saturday, injuring Trump and two others, and killing a 50-year-old married dad who was protecting his wife and family from the gunfire. 

Trump addressed the shooting in his highly-anticipated RNC speech, while noting ‘you’ll never hear it from me a second time, because it’s actually too painful to tell.’ 

‘I’m not supposed to be here tonight,’ he said. ‘I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God. And watching the reports over the last few days, many people say it was a providential moment. Probably was.’

‘For the rest of my life, I will be grateful for the love shown by that giant audience of patriots that stood bravely on that fateful evening in Pennsylvania,’ he added.