(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Could Joe Biden, the disgraced former president, be plotting a return in 2028? New remarks from one of his closest advisors suggest he never should have been forced out of the 2024 race in the first place.
Mike Donilon, a longtime Biden strategist and senior White House advisor, claimed on Feb. 13 that Biden could have defeated President Donald Trump had the Democratic Party not panicked after his disastrous debate performance in July.
Speaking at the Harvard Kennedy School, Donilon scolded party leaders and donors for abandoning Biden months before Americans headed to the polls.
“Lots of people have terrible debates. Trump had a terrible debate against Harris. Reagan had a terrible debate. Obama had a terrible debate. Lots of people had terrible debates,” Donilon said, brushing off concerns over Biden’s incoherent debate.
“Usually, the party doesn’t lose its mind but that’s what happened here. It melted down. And what happened was in my view,” he added. Donilon claimed the Democratic Party “lost its mind” and turned its back to Biden despite his supposed viability in the election.
“I have never seen a situation where in the summer of a general election, in a race where you are down three points nationally and maybe five points in Pennsylvania, that people say, ‘You know what? It’s over. Done. Can’t win.’ But that’s what happened,” Donilon complained.
Citing questionable and limited evidence, he insisted that post-debate polling showed Biden gaining momentum following the debate.
“If you go back and look at some of the focus groups done the night of the debate, they will say Trump won. They will say they are worried about Biden’s age,” Donilon declared. “They will also say something else. They were really worried about Trump. They were worried about the fact that he said he would not accept the results of the election. They were worried that he said I had nothing to do with January 6.”
Donilon also accused Democratic elites and “the biggest funders in America” of plotting Biden’s ouster, claiming they “all said he’s got to go.”
But Donilon’s remarks ignore a glaring reality: Biden’s decline was evident from the moment he took office in 2021. His mental and physical struggles were captured in countless videos, as widely reported by Headline USA.
David Axelrod, a former senior advisor to former President Barack Obama, called Donilon “delusional,” seemingly conceding that Biden was destined to lose the 2024 race.
Delusional https://t.co/7zWQ7liINN
— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) February 22, 2025
Under Biden, the U.S. suffered historic inflation, unprecedented border crossings and foreign policy disasters. Thirteen U.S. service members were killed during Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. Wars broke out in Eastern Europe and the Middle East under Biden’s watch.
His administration was also mired in corruption. He became the only president in U.S. history to issue blanket and preemptive pardons for his family members, shielding them from prosecution for alleged influence-peddling schemes.
Among those pardoned were the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and the president’s siblings, Francis, James and Valerie Biden. Also covered by the pardons were the president’s brother- and sister-in-law, John T. Owens and Sarah Biden.
Even after Biden exited the race, his equally unpopular heir, Kamala Harris, couldn’t escape his damning legacy, clearing the path for Trump’s historic return in 2025.
Donilon, who taught a class attended by this article’s author in 2020, did not respond to an interview request for this piece, nor to a question about whether Biden could mount a comeback in 2028.
