Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday that former President Joe Biden made a “terrible mistake” to run for president again in 2024.
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Her comments, which came during an interview at the 92nd Street Y with “The New Yorker” editor David Remnick, marked her strongest public criticism yet of Biden’s decision to embark on another presidential campaign before ultimately dropping out after a widely panned debate performance.
Asked by Remnick whether Biden made a “terrible mistake” to run in 2024, Clinton responded, “He made a terrible mistake. He made a terrible mistake for himself, his legacy and for the country.”
While Clinton acknowledged that “counterfactual narratives are always a bit tricky,” she said she believed if Biden had maintained his original plan to serve only one term and announced he would “pass the torch to the next generation, we would have had a real contest.”
“Very sadly, I believe whoever emerged from that contest, whether it was the vice president or a governor or a senator or anybody else, would have beaten Donald Trump,” she said. “So I think it was a terrible miscalculation on the part of President Biden.”
NBC News has reached out to Biden’s office and the White House for comment.
Biden dropped out of the presidential race after a debate just months before the election, ultimately throwing his support behind then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Former first lady Jill Biden, who at the time praised her husband’s performance as “great” and said he “answered every question,” revealed this spring that she thought he was having a stroke during the debate, adding that she had not seen him like that “before or since.”
Biden’s debate performance sparked a deluge of concerns about his age and mental fitness, ultimately prompting numerous Democrats to publicly call on him to drop out of the race.
Asked why high-profile Democrats were not more vocal about his decision to run for re-election, Clinton said that while there were conversations happening privately, “there was no way to convince him by going public.”
Clinton was also asked whether Harris lost the election only because of the short campaign timeline.
“I think that was definitely a factor,” Clinton said. “I think she also found herself really in a difficult position trying to run as the sitting vice president but separate herself from the sitting president. That’s really hard.”
Clinton was the Democratic nominee for president in 2016, and both she and Biden also both ran for president in the 2008 cycle. Former President Barack Obama ultimately won that contest after picking Biden as his running mate.
