Buttigieg, who defended Biden’s mental acuity for years, now declares ex-prez ‘should not have run’ again

WASHINGTON — Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who spent years defending ex-President Joe Biden from attacks over his mental acuity, declared Sunday that the 82-year-old shouldn’t have run for re-election.

Buttigieg, 43, who underscored that he was not involved with Biden’s decision-making process, appeared to back former Vice President Kamala Harris in rebuking their elderly boss’s decision to seek a second term.

“He should not have run,” Buttigieg told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “And if he had made that decision sooner, we might have been better off.

“But it literally was his decision. Nobody else was able to make that decision,” Buttigieg said. “And now in front of us, we’re confronted with the decisions that come next. And that’s where we’ve got to focus.”

The former transportation boss, who is rumored to be eyeing a 2028 presidential run, had previously taken a much softer stand on Biden’s disastrous re-election bid, which led to him bowing out at the last minute and Harris taking over and spectacularly losing to President Trump.

In May, when Buttigieg was asked whether Biden should not have run again, he responded, “Maybe, you know, right now, with the benefit of hindsight, I think most people would agree that is the case.”

In an interview with NPR’s “Morning Edition” in July, Buttigieg denied seeing Biden in cognitive decline and appeared to blame many of his faux pas on tiredness.

He conveyed a similar sentiment to reporters in May.

“Every time I needed something from him from the West Wing, I got it,” Buttigieg said at the time of his old boss.

“And the time I worked closest with him in his last year was around the Baltimore bridge collapse. And I want to tell you is that the same president the world saw addressing that, was the president that I was involved with.” 

But many top Democrats were forced to publicly reckon with their role in downplaying Biden’s fitness for office after the release of the damning book, “Original Sin,” by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson earlier this year.

The book claimed that multiple cabinet officials have now admitted they had doubts about Biden’s ability to discharge his duties as president. Those officials were not named in the book.

Buttigieg had been asked about Harris’ upcoming book, in which she blasted Biden’s “recklessness” for vying for reelection.

” ‘It’s Joe and Jill’s decision’ — we all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized,” Harris bluntly reflected in her upcoming book, referring to Biden and his wife, according to a preview from The Atlantic magazine. “Was it grace or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness.”

Buttigieg responded with his comments agreeing Biden should not have tried to run again.