In his first interview since dropping out of the presidential race, US President Joe Biden has told broadcaster CBS that he made the decision in order to maintain democracy in the United States.
Speaking on the CBS News Sunday Morning programme, Biden said: “The polls we had showed that it was a neck-and-neck 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 gonna 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 [former speaker of the House of Representatives] Nancy Pelosi say…’ ‘Why did so-and-so…’ And I thought it’d be a real distraction,” Biden added.
The 81-year-old leader abandoned his re-election bid and backed Vice President Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate in July.
Biden stressed that besides what the polls showed him, the main reason behind his decision was also to “maintain democracy” and “defeat Trump”, in reference to former President Donald Trump, who is once again the Republican Party’s presidential candidate.
“I thought it was important. Because, although it’s a great honour being president, I think I have an obligation to the country to do what [is] the most important thing you can do, and that is, we must, we must, we must defeat Trump.”
Polls initially showed that Trump had built a lead over Biden, including in battleground states, after Biden’s debate performance on June 27, when he appeared to struggle to speak coherently and when his performance strengthened the argument that he no longer had the cognitive ability to be president.
But Harris’s entry to the race has changed the dynamic.
An Ipsos poll published on Thursday showed Harris led Trump nationally 42 percent to 37 percent in the race for the November 5 election.
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