Trump, other presidential candidates react to Biden dropout

July 21 (UPI) -- Former President Donald Trump and Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein led responses from candidates preparing for the 2024 presidential election after Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

Trump's reaction was characteristically swift and blunt as he called Biden the "worst president by far in the history of our nation" in a statement on his Truth Social platform.

"All those around him, including his doctor and the media, knew that he wasn't capable of being president, and he wasn't," Trump said. "We will suffer greatly because of his presidency, but we will remedy the damage he has done very quickly. Make America Great Again!"

Stein ran for president in 2016 and he a candidate this year.

"Joe Biden has been removed from power by the same anti-democratic forces that rigged the field for him in 2020 and skipped the primary to anoint him in 2024," Stein said in a statement.

"Don't be fooled. The same @DNC elites that put him in power will replace him with another tool for Wall Street and the war machine. We will continue to fight oligarchy, empire and genocide like our lives depend on it."

Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a former Democrat, commended Biden for stepping down on social media and called on Democratic party leadership to be open and transparent with processes for selecting a new nominee.

"His infirmities were evident to any unbiased observer from the beginning. It was this progressive deterioration -- and his abandonment of Democratic Party principles -- that prompted me to enter the race and ensure American voters had a viable, vigorous alternative to Donald Trump," Kennedy said.

"Yet the response of the DNC was to try and hide President Biden's degeneration from the American public and disable democracy to ram him through to his party's nomination."

Kennedy said, like many Americans, fear that Democratic elites are going to "rig the nominating process again to get a monumentally unpopular vice president to step into President Biden's shoes." Biden, the Clintons and many other Democrats have already endorsed Kamala Harris.

"I call on the Democratic Party to return to its traditional commitment to democracy and exemplify it with an open process. Instead of anointing a candidate hand-picked by DNC elites, the party should use neutral polling to identify the candidate who can best beat Donald Trump. The delegates should then select a nominee based on this information," Kennedy said.

"If they had done this to begin with, I would not have had to leave the Democratic Party."

Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, and Trump's vice presidential running mate, said on social media he Biden should be disqualified from serving the rest of his term as president.

"If Joe Biden ends his reelection campaign, how can he justify remaining President?" Vance (Ohio), posted Sunday on the social platform X. "Not running for reelection would be a clear admission that President Trump was right all along about Biden not being mentally fit enough to serve as Commander-in-Chief. There is no middle ground."

Biden did not campaign heavily in the 2020 election, largely because of COVID restrictions and he was leading in public opinion polls, which meant he didn't have to campaign vigorously.