President Donald Trump said Thursday that Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren had stayed in the 2020 presidential race just long enough to really hurt independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Trump made the comment during a Fox News town hall — his first of the 2020 campaign — with hosts Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier. (RELATED: Trump Mocks Elizabeth Warren As She Drops Out Of Presidential Race)
WATCH:
MacCallum posed the question, noting that Warren had dropped out of the race earlier in the day. “I want to know what your reaction to that was,” she said.
“If she’s a true progressive which probably she is, she should have dropped out three days ago,” Trump shrugged. “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.”
Trump went on to suggest that, had Warren dropped out before Super Tuesday, her voters might have pushed Sanders to victory in more states. “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.”
The president concluded by saying that Warren, who said that she was not ready to endorse anyone when she suspended her campaign, could have swung things for Sanders if she had just dropped out earlier.
“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 explained. “I think he would be leading by a lot right now had she not been in the race.”