Donald Trump says Elizabeth Warren pulling out late has spoiled Bernie Sanders' party: 'She did him no favors'
Elizabeth Warren, one of the three top Democratic candidates running for this year’s presidential election, quit the race on Thursday, March 5, following a dismal show on Super Tuesday (March 3) when she couldn't even win her own state Massachusetts. The 70-year-old senator from the Bay State announced her decision first on a staff call and then confirmed it in a news conference outside her residence in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The exit of Warren, who based her campaign on an anti-corruption plank but could not win a single state of the 18 that went to polls in a month between February 3 and March 3, meant America would not see a woman president for another four years.
Warren’s premature exit saw President Donald Trump reacting, as he has been doing almost on every event in the Democratic camp. On Thursday, the Republican leader said that by staying for so long in the race that wasn’t going anywhere for her, Warren wanted to hurt Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ chances. Trump has spoken in favor of Sanders quite a few times of late, attacking the Democratic Party’s decision to back Joe Biden to corner Sanders, something he called a 'coup' against the veteran leader.
Trump expressed his views on Warren during a Fox News town hall, his first of the 2020 cycle, where the hosts were Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier. When MacCallum asked Trump about his reaction to Warren dropping out of the high-profile race, Trump said: “If she’s a true progressive which probably she is, she should have dropped out three days ago. It would’ve been a whole different race. Texas was close, she didn’t do well but she got a lot of votes, far more than the difference. Think about Maine, it was almost a tie, they had to wait a day and a half before they could even call it. She came in third and it was a very distant third but she got a lot of votes.”
Warren finished third in only five of the 14 states that went to the primaries/caucuses on Super Tuesday while debutant Michael Bloomberg did so in nine states besides winning the territory of American Samoa. In terms of delegates, Warren could muster only 64 till the end of the Super Tuesday, way behind the top two — Biden (627) and Sanders (551). In Massachusetts, Warren got a little over 21 percent of the votes and 25 delegates. Biden won it with 34 percent of votes and Sanders came second with 27 percent.
Trump mocked Warren after her Super Tuesday debacle and said "Pocahontas" — the infamous nickname he has given to Warren — could have a cold beer with her husband.
'Had Warren dropped out early, Sanders would have won more Super Tuesday states'
Trump suggested that had Warren dropped out before the Super Tuesday contests, her voters might have backed Sanders. “Bernie Sanders would have won five, six, seven states. Would have won Minnesota, would have won at least another two or three states. When you look at it, she did him no favors, that was not a good friendship,” he said.
“She didn’t even have to endorse him, if she just dropped out of the race without an endorsement, he would’ve won a tremendous number of states that he lost, he lost states by not very much and she got enough votes that it would’ve made a big difference,” Trump concluded. “I think he would be leading by a lot right now had she not been in the race.”
Warren has not endorsed anybody post her exit from the race. Though her campaign had a lot of similarities with Sanders’ left-leaning stances, yet the two saw a crack in their terms in recent months after Warren accused Sanders of remarking that a woman can never be the president of the United States. Trump backed Sanders on that occasion, too, saying he could not say such things.