Our conversation with President Biden for @CBSSunday, taped in the residence on the second floor of the White House https://t.co/RSH46hXl84
— Robert Costa (@costareports) August 11, 2024
President Joe Biden said he dropped out of the 2024 presidential race because he feared a battle over his candidacy would distract Democrats from defeating Donald Trump in November. In his first interview since quitting, Biden told CBS News that his Democratic colleagues in Congress thought he would hurt them in their races. “I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic,” Biden said.
“You’d be interviewing me about why did Nancy Pelosi say – and I thought it’d be a real distraction.”
President Biden to @CBSSunday: "We must, we must, we must defeat Trump.”https://t.co/gd6lmKgarM
— Robert Costa (@costareports) August 9, 2024
The 81-year-old president emphasized he had “no serious problem” with his health. He blamed his poor debate performance against Trump on being sick at the time.
Biden expressed regret for not doing more to take credit for the expansive $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law. “The biggest mistake we made,” he said, was that “we didn’t put up signs saying, ‘Joe did it.’”https://t.co/dtHQGOuoWf
— Todd N. Tucker (@toddntucker) August 11, 2024
Biden pledged to campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris, saying he would do whatever she “thinks I can do to help most.”
“We must defeat Trump,” he said.
Biden added that if he had continued his campaign, the presidential contest would have gone “down to the wire.”
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was reported to have led the push to oust Biden after the debate, a claim she has not exactly denied. During the interview, Biden misspoke several times but generally seemed more coherent than during the live televised debate. As pressure mounted, he announced his exit from the race on July 21.
Party support then swiftly coalesced around Harris, who has so far outperformed Biden in opinion polls. The president has said he intended to be a bridge to the next generation when he ran in 2020. “When I ran the first time, I thought of myself as being a transition president,” he said.
Biden prioritizes defeating Trump over campaign
“I can’t even say how old I am. It’s hard for me to get it out of my mouth.”
Biden said he decided to run against Trump after a 2017 gathering of far-right activists in Charlottesville, Virginia turned deadly.
He accused Trump of emboldening racists. “Every other time the Ku Klux Klan has been involved they wore hoods so they’re not identified,” he said. “Under his presidency, they came out of those woods with no hoods, knowing they had an ally.”
Biden repeated his concerns about what might happen after November’s election, saying he was “not confident at all” that there will be a peaceful transfer of power if Harris defeats Trump.
He said he was worried there would be violence if Trump loses. “He’s a genuine danger to American security,” Biden said of the former president. Trump has insisted, without evidence, that he was cheated out of victory in 2020.
He has warned there will be attempts to “rig” the vote this year and pledged to pardon some or all of those convicted for the January 2021 Capitol riot. Biden said he would be campaigning for Harris and had spoken to Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro about touring the state. “I’m going to be campaigning in other states as well.
And I’m going to do whatever Kamala thinks I can do to help most,” he said.
- BBC.”Joe Biden explains why he dropped out of White House race”.
- FoxNews.”President Biden admits pressure from Democrats contributed to decision to drop out”.
- CBSNews.”President Biden speaks on the stakes of the 2024 election, and on his place in history”.