A new book detailing the 2020 election claims that former President Barack Obama privately urged President Joe Biden not to run for the White House in 2020, and was "enamored" with one of his primary opponents.
"Obama's fears about Biden and his team ran deep — deeper than defeat," wrote Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes in their new book "Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency," according to excerpts from The Washington Free Beacon. "Obama worried that his former vice president would embarrass himself on the campaign trail and that the people around him would not be able to prevent a belly-flop."
They add that Obama repeatedly pushed Biden not to run, writing that "it had stung Biden badly in 2015 when Obama made clear his preference for Hillary Clinton."
The authors note that "Obama, like much of his brain trust, seemed to be enamored with a former Texas congressman, Beto O'Rourke," in the 2020 Democratic Party primary.
The former president previously praised O'Rourke for his Senate run, saying in 2018 that he was an "impressive young man who ran a terrific race in Texas," when asked on CNN's "The Axe Files" in an interview.
"The reason I was able to make a connection with a sizable portion of the country was because people had a sense that I said what I meant," Obama said at the time, according to CNN. "And that's a quality that, as I look at what I'm sure will be a strong field of candidates in 2020, many of whom are friends of mine and whom I deeply respect — what I oftentimes am looking for first and foremost is, do you seem to mean it? Are you in this thing cause you have a strong set of convictions that you are willing to risk things for?"
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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