Former Harris aide calls for Biden to resign so she can be president briefly

Jamal Simmons, a former aide to Vice President Harris, called for President Biden to resign so that the vice president can have his role for a short amount of time.

“Joe Biden’s been a phenomenal president, he’s lived up to so many of the promises he’s made. There’s one promise left that he could fulfill, being a transitional figure,” Simmons said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on a panel featuring anchor Dana Bash, in a clip highlighted by Mediaite.

“He could resign the presidency in the next 30 days, make Kamala Harris president of the United States,” he continued, drawing shocked reactions from others.

President Biden dropped out of this year’s race for the White House in late July, following a rising tide of concern about his age and mental fitness that came in the wake of a rough debate performance against President-elect Trump a month before. Harris then took his position at the top of the ticket, but eventually lost to Trump a few months later.

Simmons said Harris stepping into her boss’s role “would make sure that it would dominate the news, at a point where Democrats have to learn drama and transparency and doing things the public will wanna see.”

Harris’s loss to Trump and the loss of control of the Senate in the 2024 elections has rattled Democrats, many of whom view the president-elect as a threat to democracy. 

Democrats have also taken to infighting in the wake of the election, with those on the left saying their party didn’t go far enough in their direction to excite the party’s base, while centrists have said the party went too far left and frightened moderate voters.

“We are out of touch with the crisis of meaning/purpose fueling MAGA,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said Sunday in a thread on the social platform X. “We refuse to pick big fights. Our tent is too small.”

The Hill has reached out to the White House, the vice president’s office and the Democratic National Committee for comment.