Biden campaign responds to report on Obama warnings about Trump

The Biden campaign defended its strategy in response to new reporting on criticism from former President Obama on the structure of the Biden campaign and on his concern about former President Trump’s strength as a political candidate going into 2024.

Quentin Fulks, principal deputy campaign manager for President Biden’s reelection bid, on Sunday defended the campaign’s approach and stressed that Obama and Biden are aligned in their position that Trump needs to be defeated.

“We’re going to continue to do what we need to do in order to be competitive and in order to make sure we’re growing the infrastructure that we need to win. President Obama and President Biden talk frequently, as do the campaign and former operatives from President Biden’s administration and his campaign,” Fulks said in an interview on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” when asked how the campaign is responding to Obama.

“But the one thing is that we’re both aligned on the fact that we have to push back on MAGA extremists and the threat that they pose to freedom and democracy. And so we’re focused on doing just that.”

“The president has been very clear that the experience he got as [vice president] serving with President Obama has been critical to the experience that he brings to the job and what he’s been able to accomplish. But we’re united in the fact that we have to do everything we can to push back on Donald Trump and the threat that he poses to democracy,” he added.

Fulks’s defense of the president and his reelection bid comes after The Washington Post reported a story about concerns Obama expressed to Biden at a lunch at the White House in December. Obama reportedly told Biden that it’s important to have more top-level decisionmakers in the campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del., or that he needs to empower those already there.

Fulks did not respond to a specific follow-up question on whether the campaign plans to make any structural changes to the campaign.

He said, however, that the campaign has been “awake” since April and that Americans are only now starting to tune in.

“Look, our campaign has been awake since the president announced in April, which is why we’ve come out of the gate swinging. It’s why we put [innovative] organizing programs in place to begin to communicate with voters on the ground, which is why we’ve made investments into constituency media, the largest investment to voters of color, Hispanic voters, young voters, than any other presidential campaign in history.”

He continued: “And now we’re in the phase where more Americans are paying attention to what’s going on. And that is why we’re making the choice. The president’s speech at Valley Forge was the first of that. We’ll do it again tomorrow in South Carolina. And we’re going to continue to make that case to the American people. Because we are running this campaign and organizing it as though democracy is on the ballot. Because that’s what’s at stake this election.’