Retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid took a swipe at potential 2020 Democratic candidates for the presidency and described the group as an “old folks home.”
Reid made the jab in a New York Magazine interview released Tuesday, when he was asked about whom he would support in the next presidential cycle.
“It depends on who’s running,” Reid told his staff. “It appears we’re going to have an old-folks’ home. We’ve got [Elizabeth] Warren; she’ll be 71. Biden will be 78. Bernie [Sanders] will be 79.”
Reid was also critical of his replacement in the Democratic leadership, incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as well as other Democrats, for not being strident enough against President-elect Donald Trump in the days immediately following the election and for, instead, pledging to work with Trump on increasing financial security for the middle class.
Reid, however, slammed Trump three days after the election calling him “a sexual predator who lost the popular vote and fueled his campaign with bigotry and hate.”
“What I was trying to say,” Reid told NY Magazine, “is, ‘Be careful, because this is not all fun and games. The stuff he has said has been hateful and disruptive and crude and not helpful to anybody, and so be careful what you agree with him about.’ ”
Adam Jentleson, a Reid senior adviser added, “He was standing athwart the normalization of Trump, yelling ‘Stop!’ He wanted to show Democrats that this is how you should be approaching things.”