Biden ‘Really P---ed Off’: Inside the ‘Abrupt End’ That ‘Blindsided’ Campaign Staff… and the Brutal Revelation That Forced President to Drop Political ‘Bomb’

Despite its seeming inevitability, Joe Biden's decision to drop out of the race still came as a shock – especially to his dedicated campaign staffers, who were blindsided by the abrupt end of the president's bid for re-election.

Isolated at his $3.4 vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware while recovering from COVID, surrounded only by a shrinking inner circle made up of first lady Jill Biden and longtime advisors Anthony Bernal, Annie Tomasini, Mike Donilon, and Steve Ricchetti, the 81-year-old POTUS made the call on Saturday night, RadarOnline.com can reveal.

Biden was “really pissed off” by the betrayal of friends and allies within the Democratic party who had abandoned him, calling for him to step aside in the wake of his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump, and determined to stay in the fight – until Donilon and Ricchetti confronted him with the cold hard facts of new internal polling data showing that he could no longer beat Trump.

Faced with that brutal revelation, Biden knew what he had to do. He told his family, asked his aides to start drafting a public statement, and prepared to drop a political bombshell on the world.

The next day, Biden called Vice President Kamala Harris and informed her of his decision. He also told his White House chief of staff, Jeff Zients, and campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dilley.

At 1:45 PM on Sunday, he called his senior staff to let them know what was going on. Less than a minute later, while he was still on the call, his official X account announced the news to the public – which is how most of his staff first found out.

One campaign staffer told the Daily Mail: “No one had a heads up before the tweet posted. Which, to me, is an insane way to treat the 1300 people that work for you on the campaign.”

An aide added that it “needed to happen' but “he kinda just dropped a bomb. Like it's not surprising but it's shocking”.

Campaign Chair Jen O'Malley Dillon acknowledged that the announcement was “hard for staff who may have gotten the news while they were working or door knocking, but it was important for the president to hear from him in his own words”.

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Another member of Biden’s re-election team, who only found out after a family member read a news alert, told NBC News that the decision was made at the last-minute: “No one knew. Kamala didn’t even know.”

Less than 30 minutes after withdrawing from the election, Biden officially endorsed Harris.

Minnesota Democratic Party chair Ken Martin, who was preparing a Biden open house in Minneapolis when he heard on the news that Biden had dropped out, quickly organized a conference call with other state party chairs. He said: “Everyone I’ve talked to right now agrees that we have to unify quickly ... The quicker we can unify our party behind a ticket, the sooner we can get this campaign moving.”