A former House Democrat bizarrely compared removing President Biden from the 2024 Democratic ticket to “knocking off” the longtime ruler of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, during the Arab Spring uprising in 2011.
“It’s easy to knock people off. We saw it in the so-called Arab Spring,” ex-Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.) told ABC News’ Linsey Davis in a Thursday night interview.
“We knocked off Mubarak, the leader of Egypt. Where is Egypt now?” Harman went on. “We ended up electing — they ended up electing the Muslim Brotherhood, which was a very toxic, unpalatable group.”
“And then that led to a military leader, (Abdel Fattah) el-Sisi and a lot of journalists are in jail and I don’t think people would say Egypt has better leadership now than it did under Mubarak,” she added before recovering, “Not totally defending him either.”
Mubarak, who died in February 2020, served as Egypt’s fourth president from 1981 to 2011, during which time he remained a close US ally and fierce opponent of violent Islamic extremism in the Middle East.
In a January 2011 interview, then-Vice President Joe Biden declined to call him a “dictator.”
“Look, Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things and he’s been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interests in the region: Middle East peace efforts, the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing the relationship with Israel,” Biden told PBS News’ Jim Lehrer.
The now-81-year-old president stumbled over his words at several points during a critical press conference to conclude the NATO summit in Washington, DC, this week — leading at least 20 Democrats to call on him to withdraw from his rematch against former President Donald Trump.
The presser was meant to shore up Democratic support, following the widespread panic in the party due to his disastrous debate performance against Trump on June 27.
Biden spoke in a raspy and soft voice at both events, offering up nonsequiturs about having “finally beat Medicare” and inexplicably urging reporters to “listen” to Trump instead of himself.
He also shocked NATO leaders by mixing up the names of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — whose nations are at war with each other — and went on to stun his own Cabinet by referring to Vice President Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump.”
“I thought Biden’s performance tonight was solid. Yes, there was one gaffe,” Harman said inaccurately on ABC. “And there was a gaffe earlier today. I don’t think it’s been a secret for 40 years that he is gaffe-prone. So I wouldn’t judge him that way.
“Having said that, I’m not going to pretend that the poll numbers are great,” she added. “And I’m not going to pretend that some of the concerns aren’t valid.
“But knocking someone down is easier than building someone up,” Harman concluded in another reference to Mubarak.
“Where is the team that will succeed Biden, and how do we know they can beat Trump?”
Biden is still polling better against Trump than any Democratic rival — including Harris — after his debate flop, while losing in several key battleground states to his 2020 Republican opponent.
In his PBS interview amid Arab Spring, Biden similarly cautioned against overthrowing Mubarak.
“Has the time come for President Mubarak of Egypt to go, to stand aside?” Lehrer asked the vice president.
“No, I think the time has come for President Mubarak to begin to move in the direction that — to be more responsive to some of the needs of the people out there,” Biden answered.
Both Biden and Mubarak have faced allegations of corruption during their decades-long tenure in public office, with the Egyptian strongman eventually serving time in prison along with his sons for embezzling state money to upgrade “presidential palaces.”
US House Republicans in the past year have investigated the president, first son Hunter Biden and first brother James Biden for their history of cashing in on foreign business deals by “selling the Biden brand” — with millions of dollars eventually flowing back to Joe Biden and his family.
James and Hunter have also been the target of Justice Department probes for dubious investment schemes and tax fraud, respectively, with the 54-year-old first son headed to trial in September after evading $1.4 million in payments to the IRS.