U.S. President, Joe Biden has opened up about his decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential election.
The 81-year-old shocked the world when he revealed, via a letter posted to his X account, that he would not be seeking re-election for a second term and, instead, would be endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to stand against Donald Trump.
It followed weeks of increasingly public pressure from top Democrats including former President Barack Obama — to drop out of the race, amid concerns about his age and mental fitness following the disastrous June 27 debate
Biden appeared in an interview with CBS News’ Bob Costa on Sunday, August 11 in his first interview since he chose not to run for re-election.
During the interview, Biden revealed that pressure from fellow Democrats contributed to his decision.
The 81-year-old also notably name-dropped former house speaker Nancy Pelosi, with the two having not spoken for some time.
“Look, polls we had showed it was a neck-and-neck race, it would have been down to the wire,” he said.
“A number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was going to hurt them in the races. And I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic, you’d be interviewing me about why did Nancy Pelosi say -why did – and I thought it’d be a real distraction,” he said.
“Number two, when I ran the first time, I thought of myself as being a transition President. I can’t even say how old I am — it’s hard for me to get out of my mouth, and uh, but things got moving so quickly it didn’t happen.
And the combination was, that I thought it was the critical issue for me still is, not a joke, maintaining this democracy.
“But I thought it was important because although I, it’s a great honour being President, I think I have an obligation to the country to do what I, the most important thing you can do, and that is we must, we must, we must defeat Trump.”
Biden, who has kept a low profile since dropping out, also suggested during the CBS interview there may not be a peaceful transfer of power in January 2025.
“If Trump wins, no I’m not confident at all,” he said, before correcting himself.
“I mean if Trump loses, I’m not confident at all. He means what he says, we don’t take him seriously. He means it, all this stuff about, if we lose it’ll be a bloodbath, it’ll be a stolen [election]. Look what they’re trying to do now, in the local election districts where people count the votes. Putting people in place in states that they’re going to count the votes, right? You can’t love your country only when you win.”
Biden claimed that Trump who narrowly survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13 was “a genuine danger to American security”.
“Mark my words, if he wins … watch what happens,” he said.
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