Moore: Biden 'deserved better' than people around him publicly demanding he step down

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) criticized fellow Democrats for calling on President Biden to leave the presidential race publicly earlier this month, noting that the move hurt the administration.

Moore said in an ABC "This Week" interview with Martha Raddatz on Sunday that while he agreed with critics that Biden should end his reelection campaign, he disagreed with publicly making the claim.

“I had private conversations with the president. And I'm a big believer that when you care about somebody, you tell them the truth,” he said. “And I had private conversations where I was telling the president the truth.”

“I also know that the president deserved better than people who were running around him and going into public and demanding that the President of the United States step down, particularly when you look at the track record of the Biden-Harris administration,” he continued. “I've had a phenomenal partner in the Biden-Harris administration to be able to deliver the kind of results that we needed in Maryland. And so I knew that if he said that he was going to continue pushing forward, that I was going to stand with him.”

Biden left the race last week, quickly throwing his weight behind Vice President Kamala Harris as his preferred successor as the party’s presidential nominee. Democrats have coalesced around Harris, with her campaign already gathering enough committed delegates to effectively lock up the party’s nomination.

No other candidate has challenged Harris for the nomination, and her campaign has broken numerous fundraising records as it attempts to make up for a late start.

Polling has shown Harris improving over Biden's figures against former President Trump, though now all attention is on who her vice presidential candidate will be.