President Joe Biden said it was the pressure from top Democratic colleagues that led him to drop out of the race to stay in the White House, Newsweek reported.
During his first interview after announcing he would no longer seek reelection, Biden told CBS News’ chief election and campaign correspondent, Robert Costa, that heightened pressure from Democrats in the House and the Senate prompted him to make the difficult decision to drop out. “The polls we had showed it was a neck-and-neck race, it would have been down to the wire,” the President said.
“But what happened was a number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and the Senate thought that I was going to hurt them in the races. And I was concerned that if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic you’d be interviewing me about.
The President specifically name-dropped former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who, while on her book tour, has been opening up about how she feels about Biden passing the torch to Vice President and now presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. “You’d be interviewing me about ‘why did Nancy Pelosi say, why did so’… .and I thought it would be a real distraction,” Biden continued.
According to Fox News, Pelosi admits that she hasn’t spoken to Biden since the bombshell election switch-up. While denying that she pressured the President to
stop his bid for reelection, Pelosi told reporters that she didn’t think Biden would win in November 2024. “Now I was really asking for a better campaign,” the first woman House speaker said.“We did not have a campaign that was on the path to victory. Members knew that in their districts.”
Prior to ending his campaign, Biden was standing firm on staying in the race. While making an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Pelosi said Democratic colleagues were encouraging the President to do what he feels is best. “It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run,” she said. “We are all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short.”
Biden admitted that when he ran in 2020, his goal was to be a “transition president,” but things started to move faster than expected. “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,” he said.
“But things got moving so quickly, it didn’t happen. And the combination was that
I thought it was still a critical issue for me still, it’s not a joke, maintaining this democracy. Although it’s a great honor being president, I think I have an obligation to the country to do the most important thing I can do, and that is, we must defeat Trump.”While Biden has been making minimal appearances, he is scheduled to join his Vice President and her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, on the campaign trail. Biden thinks Harris made the right decision in selecting Walz, who he said is “my kind of guy,” and thinks the duo is “a hell of a team.”
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