President Biden says he decided to drop out of the presidential race to because he was concerned that the intraparty battle over his candidacy and mental fitness would distract from Democrats’ efforts to win the presidency and down-ballot races in November.
“The polls we had showed that it was a neck-and-neck race, it would’ve been down to the wire. But what happened was a number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was gonna hurt them in the races. And I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic,” he said in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning that aired Sunday morning.
“I thought it’d be a real distraction, number one,” 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 it outta my mouth. But things got moving so quickly, it — didn’t happen. And the combination was that I thought it — is the critical issue for me still, it’s not a joke, maintaining this democracy.”
Biden posted a statement on X announcing his decision to exit the race last month following a pressure campaign by Democratic lawmakers and pundits to get him to drop out in the wake of his disastrous presidential-debate performance. He said at the time he believed ending his campaign was “in the best interest of my party and the country.”
During his interview with CBS, Biden went on to say that the “most important thing” is defeating Trump. In clips of the interview that were released last week, Biden said it was not confident there would be a peaceful transfer of power if Trump wins.
Biden told the outlet he plans to campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz.
Asked what he says to people who have questioned his health and his ability to appear on the campaign trail or finish out the rest of his term, Biden said: “All I can say is, ‘Watch.’ That’s all.”
“Look, I had a really, really bad day in that debate because I was sick. But I have no serious problem,” he added.
While Democrats celebrated Biden’s decision to drop out of the race, Republicans are questioning how Biden can serve out the remaining six months of his term if he is not mentally fit enough to campaign.
After Biden’s announcement, House Speaker Mike Johnson called on the president to resign immediately and criticized Democrats for overruling primary voters’ wishes.
“At this unprecedented juncture in American history, we must be clear about what just happened,” he said. “The Democrat Party forced the Democrat nominee off the ballot, just over 100 days before the election. Having invalidated the votes of more than 14 million Americans who selected Joe Biden to be the Democrat nominee for president, the self-proclaimed ‘party of democracy’ has proven exactly the opposite.”
“If Joe Biden is not fit to run for President, he is not fit to serve as President. He must resign the office immediately. November 5 cannot arrive soon enough,” he added.