The Right Reacts to Biden’s Withdrawal: ‘It’s A Coup’

Many other right-wing accounts online compared Biden’s resignation to the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021. “For anyone who still believes January 6th was a coup, take notes. You just witnessed a real one. July 21st,” the far-right troll account End Wokeness wrote in a post on X that has been viewed 1.5 million times.

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. added to the conspiracies, claiming, without evidence, that the decision to position vice president Kamala Harris as Biden’s likely replacement was rigged. “Many Americans fear that the same DNC elites are about to rig the nominating process again to get a monumentally unpopular vice president to step into President Biden’s shoes,” Kennedy wrote on X.

GOP Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia went even further, claiming the coup against Biden was orchestrated by the “deep state,” a well-known trope from conspiratorial movements like QAnon.

“There’s a soft civil war happening in the deep state and the elites in power,” Green wrote on X. “The Democrats, the IC [intelligence community], and their activists in the media have been lying to us saying there’s nothing wrong with Biden for years. Next, they start a coup against him demanding he drop out of the race when they couldn’t hide it anymore.”

Other conspiracy theories also sprang up, including baseless claims that Biden had been paid to drop out, was forced to sign his statement by the “deep state,” and that his withdrawal was part of efforts to cover up who was behind the assassination attempt on Trump.

On Truth Social, Trump fueled these conspiracies, claiming, without evidence, “Biden never had Covid. He is a threat to Democracy!”

In more than half a dozen angry posts on Truth Social, Trump railed against having to restart his campaign against a different opponent. Reporting over the last month has shown that Trump’s campaign team has been entirely focused on beating Biden and are likely not as prepared to fight Harris or other Democratic opponents.

Donald Trump Jr. also pushed conspiracies around Biden’s withdrawal. “This morning, Joe Biden was running according to his campaign co-chair,” he wrote on X on Sunday evening, in a post that has been viewed 1 million times. “What did they bribe Joe with or more likely what did they threaten him with that he would change his mind in a few short hours and just walk away?”

Greene also claimed that Biden and his family had been bribed to withdraw from the race: “The Biden’s [sic] must have gotten the price they demanded for the presidential library that will pay the entire family for years to come.”

This was an accusation also repeated by Representative Claudia Tenney from New York, who is co-chair of the Election Integrity Caucus. “Biden’s resignation from the ticket likely happened due to an inside deal from Democrat puppet masters to the Biden crime family,” Tenney wrote on X. “Biden and his family have benefited financially from Biden’s various political jobs for over 50 years. Watch Hunter and Biden get away with everything in the next several months. Watch Jill and Jim continue the grift.”