Biden says he dropped out due to risk he'd be 'distraction'

President Joe Biden said he ended his reelection bid after hearing from congressional Democrats that he’d hurt their down-ballot chances in November, providing his fullest explanation yet of his decision to drop out.

Biden name-checked former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during a CBS News interview that hinted at the intra-party pressure to leave the race and his reluctance to do so. Pursuing a second-term bid would have been “a real distraction,” Biden said on CBS’s "Sunday Morning."

Pelosi has been lifting the veil on the buildup to Biden’s exit in recent days. “I wanted the decision to be a better campaign so that we could win,” she said Sunday on MSNBC’s "Inside With Jen Psaki." “I did not think we were on a path to victory.”

Multiple news reports at the time suggested Democratic congressional leaders, including Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, warned Biden about the risk to down-ballot races and pressed him to consider dropping out.

Biden’s comments were his first sit-down interview since he dropped out on July 21 in the wake of a disastrous debate with former President Donald Trump, his Republican opponent, on June 27.

“Polls we had showed that is was a neck-and-neck race; it would have been down to wire,” Biden told CBS. “But what happened was a number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was going to hurt them in their 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 so and ... ’” the president said, before trailing off.

‘She’s ready’

Pelosi praised the “political astuteness” of Vice President Kamala Harris, who secured the Democratic presidential nomination after Biden bowed out. “She’s ready,” Pelosi said on MSNBC.

Biden and Harris plan to campaign in Maryland on Aug. 15, their first joint appearance since the ticket’s reset.

While Biden has framed his decision as a bid to unify the country under a younger generation of leaders, he was relentlessly pressured by his own party to make the move.

“We must, we must, we must defeat Trump,” Biden, 81, said in the CBS interview, which was recorded last week.

Biden’s exit from the race made him the first sitting U.S. president not to pursue a second term since 1968, when fellow Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson said he wouldn’t accept his party’s nomination.

It followed an already tumultuous 2024 race that’s seen Trump become the first former president to be convicted of a felony. Trump later survived an assassination event from a gunman whose bullet clipped his ear.

Biden addressed his exit in a July 24 address from the Oval Office, saying he’d “decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation.” He insisted he’d finish out his term and would stay “focused on doing my job as president.”

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