-
President Joe Biden cited pressure from House Democrats when asked by CBS why he rejected the 2024 term.
-
The president repeated in the Sunday interview that he believes he is up against strong odds Trump.
-
But his allies thought he could hurt their chances in their own campaigns, he said.
President Joe Biden said Democratic lawmakers pressured him to withdraw from the November election because they feared he would hurt their own political campaigns.
Biden spoke to CBS’s Robert Costa in an interview broadcast Sunday when asked about pressure from within the party to step aside.
“What happened was that a lot of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought I was going to hurt them in the races,” Biden said.
At the same time, he reiterated his belief that he had a strong chance against ex-President Donald Trump – a point he stuck to when he initially defended his bid to stay in the race.
“Look, the polls that we had shown it was a neck-and-neck race, it would have come down to the wire,” he told Costa.
But Biden said that amid the backlash against him, he became concerned that his health would dominate any Democratic candidate’s election debates.
“And I thought that would be a real distraction,” the president said.
Biden did not name individual senators or House representatives who have raised concerns with him. But several reports said a significant number of Democratic heavyweights, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, had tried to pull the president out of the vote.
Biden’s remarks to Costa, his first televised sit-down interview since the suspension, were a stark contrast to his earlier, dogged commitment to staying in the race.
For weeks, Biden had staunchly defended his decision to seek re-election after his lackluster debate performance on June 27 sent Democratic leaders into a panic. (Biden told Costa on Sunday that the debate was a “really, really bad day” because he was sick.)
Only “Lord Almighty” could force him to give up, he had said. Then, in a dramatic twist, the president announced in late July that he was stepping aside, saying the decision was “in the best interest of my party and the country.”
Vice President Kamala Harris has now secured the Democratic presidential nomination, and Biden told Costa that he fully intends to campaign for her, despite his earlier concerns about her health.
“I don’t have a serious problem,” he said.
The White House did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s after-hours request for comment.
Read the original article on Business Insider
