Joe Biden Admits Being Forced Out Of Presidential Race

Biden spoke with CBS News’ Bob Costa on Sunday, August 11, in his first interview since deciding not to run for re-election.

During the interview, the 81-year-old revealed that pressure from fellow Democrats played a role in his decision.

He also mentioned former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with whom he had not spoken in a long 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.”

The decision of U.S. President Joe Biden to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race has been made public.

The 81-year-old stunned everyone when he said in a letter uploaded to his X account that he would be supporting Vice President Kamala Harris in her bid to challenge Donald Trump, rather than running for reelection to a second term.

It came after weeks of growing public demand from prominent Democrats, such as former President Barack Obama, to withdraw from the race due to worries about his advanced age and mental state in the wake of the catastrophic debate on June 27.

“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.”

Trump, who on July 13 at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, nearly escaped an attempted murder, according to Biden, was “a genuine danger to American security.”

“Mark my words, if he wins … watch what happens,” he said.

A Gentle Reminder: Every obstacle is a stepping stone, every morning; a chance to go again, and those little steps take you closer to your dream.

Nnamdi Okoli