Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images; Gaelen Morse/Getty Images
- Sen. John Fetterman called out Rep. Dean Phillips over his 2024 presidential primary campaign.
- Phillips said Biden was a threat to democracy after the lawmaker was excluded from ballots in FL and NC.
- Fetterman told The Washington Post that Phillips' candidacy was aiding former President Trump.
Democratic presidential candidate Dean Phillips last week upped the ante on his primary challenge of President Joe Biden, with the congressman saying that the president is a threat to democracy.
Many Democratic lawmakers were already puzzled by Phillips' campaign, as the three-term lawmaker from the Minneapolis suburbs had long been an ally of Biden. But after Phillips lobbed a wave of criticism at Biden over his exclusion from the Democratic presidential primary ballot in Florida and North Carolina, some of the congressman's fellow Democrats aren't holding back.
Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who has no problem calling out figures from both parties, told The Washington Post that Phillips' remarks about Biden were "laughable" and said that the Minnesota lawmaker's candidacy is a "dream for Trump."
Biden and former President Donald Trump are both competing to secure their respective party nominations, which if successful would set up a rematch of the acrimonious 2020 presidential election that was defined by the economy, the COVID-19 pandemic, and race relations in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder at the hands of Minneapolis police.
And Phillips' main argument against Biden's renomination has been that the president needs to hand off the reins of the power to a younger generation, as some voters have expressed reservations about the 81-year-old president serving in the White House for another four years. (Similar arguments have also been leveled by several GOP primary challengers against the 77-year-old Trump.)
But Democrats, including some who have a preexisting relationship with Phillips, are largely unamused by his campaign tactics.
"President Biden is running against an actual real live threat to democracy," Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota told The Post last week.
"A person who literally just said yesterday he would be a dictator on Day One," she continued, alluding to Trump. "And Dean Phillips is saying the candidate for president — who he by the way voted with 100% of the time or thereabouts — is a threat to democracy? It sounds desperate."
Business Insider reached out to the Phillips campaign for comment.