Biden appears to admit he was pushed from presidential race

Article content

In his first sit-down interview since walking away from his re-election bid, U.S. President Joe Biden dropped Nancy Pelosi’s name while all but admitting that he was forced to bow out of the race.

Article content

Ultimately, Biden concluded that he would prove to be a “real distraction,” citing members of his own party who feared he would drag down other candidates.

The Commander-in-Chief faced backlash from a slew of Democrats in the aftermath of his disastrous performance while debating Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in June.

Biden told Robert Costa on CBS Sunday Morning that the presidential race “would have been down to the wire, but what happened was a number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was going to hurt them in the races.”

He continued: “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 someone?’ And I thought it’d be a real distraction.”

Article content

Article content

Biden did not elaborate on any actual friction between himself and Pelosi during the interview, but the former speaker of the house is widely believed to be the mastermind behind Biden’s ouster — a claim she didn’t deny in recent interviews.

Article content

Pelosi revealed that she has not spoken to Biden since he stepped down last month, but insisted she “never called one person” to orchestrate getting the president to step down.

“People were calling me saying that there was a challenge there,” she told the New Yorker. “So there had to be a change in the leadership of the campaign, or what would come next.”

Biden recounted that when he ran in 2020, he thought of himself as being a “transition president.”

He admitted: “I can’t even say how old I am. It’s hard for me to get it out of my mouth, but things got moving so quickly, it didn’t happen. And the combination was that I thought there’s a critical issue for me — still is not a joke — maintaining this democracy, but I thought it was important.”

Article content

He added: “Because although it’s a great honour being president, I think I have an obligation to the country to do… the most important thing we can do, and that is, we must, we must, we must defeat Trump.”

Article content

Shortly after dropping out of the race, Biden endorsed Kamala Harris’ bid for the presidency.

Biden will continue to campaign, and has reached out to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro about touring his home state.

“I’m going to be campaigning in other states as well, and I am going to do whatever Kamala thinks I can do to help most,” he said.

RECOMMENDED VIDEO

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Play Video

Biden also praised Harris’ choice of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, calling him “my kind of guy.”

Article content