Rashida Tlaib: I Don’t Need to Endorse Biden ‘to Get Rid of Donald Trump’

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) is refusing to endorse former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign for the White House, the far-left freshman congresswoman said in an interview published Monday.

“I don’t want to get into a debate with my residents,” Tlaib told Newsweek. “Residents come up to me and say, ‘Rashida, I don’t know. I hear Joe Biden this, Joe Biden that.’ I say, ‘Listen, do we need another four years of Trump? No. Then what I need you to do is go out there and focus on that.’ If the ultimate goal is to get rid of Donald Trump, that doesn’t have to involve me actually endorsing Biden.”

Tlaib — who, along with fellow “Squad” members Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN), supported Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) failed 2020 presidential campaign — said her “constituents don’t need to be bogged down” regarding whether Biden is the best candidate to defeat President Donald Trump.

“My constituents don’t need to be bogged down in, ‘Is [Biden] the best candidate?’ That’s not what you have to convince my residents,” she told the magazine. “They need to come out in droves and be inspired by something. And that is going to be a vote against Donald Trump.”

Although Tlaib has steered clear of aiding the Biden campaign, Ocasio-Cortez serves on its climate change panel, where she has pushed the presumptive Democrat nominee to adopt policies from her Green New Deal. Ocasio-Cortez has yet to formally endorse Biden but has said she would vote for the former vice president in November. In April 2019, Ocasio-Cortez said Biden running for president “does not particularly animate me.”