Chuck Schumer pushed Biden out of presidential race at Obama’s urging: report

According to a report from the New York Times, after the disastrous debate performance with Donald Trump in late June last year, Schumer made a July 13 trip from Brooklyn to Rehoboth Beach in Delaware in order to make the case to Biden that he needed to step out of the presidential race. That was the same day that Trump was shot in an assassination attempt in Butler, PA.

About a week after the conversation, Biden announced that he was stepping aside and quickly threw his support behind Vice President Kamala Harris to be the nominee. Schumer reportedly rehearsed and planned out what he was going to say on the drive over.

The New York Times reports that on the night after the June 27 debate, Schumer’s "phone started ringing, and it wouldn’t stop for days." The outlet added, "Donors, members of Congress, union bosses and even strangers who fished his number out of a Harvard reunion book were calling, pleading with him to tell Mr. Biden to get out of the race."

The night after the debate, during a dinner with Barack Obama, the former president suggested that they address the issue "right at the top" of the conversation. Obama reportedly worried about the Democrats' chances in the election and at a later point spoke to Schumer about getting the message across to Biden that he needed to step aside.

Because Obama felt that Biden still had some animosity towards him for backing Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, Obama told Schumer that he would not be the best one to tell Biden, and urged the Senator to do so instead.

"You may be a better one,” Obama told Schumer.

During the July 13 meetup with Biden, Schumer sat with him on the porch of the beach house, trying to convince him to drop out for around 45 minutes.

“If you run and you lose to Trump, and we lose the Senate, and we don’t get back the House, that 50 years of amazing, beautiful work goes out the window,” Schumer confided to Biden at the president's beach house. “But worse — you go down in American history as one of the darkest figures.”

Schumer had reportedly worried for months beforehand that Biden would lose to Trump and considered the debate to be a gift for the Democratic Party at a chance to remove him as the candidate.

As Schumer spoke to Biden about the worries of the Democrats and the Senate on that July 13 day at Rehoboth Beach, the president asked Schumer what his pollsters were saying about the situation. He told Biden, “Well, I have talked to them. My guess is you have about a 5 percent chance. None of your pollsters disagree with me.”

During the conversation, Biden only interrupted Schumer to ask one question two times, "Do you really think Kamala can win?" Schumer relayed that she would have a better chance than Biden. The president at the time did not argue or pushback, but said at the end of the conversation, "I need a week," and then dropped out on July 21.